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A Frenchman in America by Max O'Rell (pen name of Léon Paul Blouet) was published in 1891.

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K. C. Lee
Story Collector
August 1, 2014

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A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA

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Arrival Of The Pilot

Saturday, January 4, 1890.

We shall arrive in New York Harbor to-night, but too late to go on shore. After sunset, the Custom House officers are not to be disturbed. We are about to land in a country where, as I remember, everything is in subjection to the paid servant. In the United States, he who is paid wages commands.

We make the best of it. After having mercilessly tumbled us about for nine days, the wind has graciously calmed down, and our last day is going to be a good one, thanks be. There is a pure atmosphere. A clear line at the horizon divides space into two immensities, two sheets of blue sharply defined.

Faces are smoothing out a bit. People talk, are becoming, in fact, quite communicative. One seems to say to another: "Why, after all, you don't look half as disagreeable as I thought. If I had only known that, we might have seen more of each other, and killed time more quickly."

The pilot boat is in sight. It comes toward us, and sends off in a rowing-boat the pilot who will take us into port. The arrival of the pilot on board is not an incident. It is an event. Does he not bring the New York newspapers? And when you have been ten days at sea, cut off from the world, to read the papers of the day before is to come back to life again, and once more take up your place in this little planet that has been going on its jog-trot way during your temporary suppression.

[PILOT WITH PAPERS.]

The first article which meets my eyes, as I open the New York World, is headed "High time for Mr. Nash to put a stop to it!" This is the paragraph:

Ten days ago, Mrs. Nash brought a boy into existence. Three days afterward she presented her husband with a little girl. Yesterday the lady was safely delivered of a third baby.

"Mrs. Nash takes her time over it" would have been another good heading.

Here we are in America. Old World ways don't obtain here. In Europe, Mrs. Nash would have ushered the little trio into this life in one day; but in Europe we are out of date, rococo, and if one came over to find the Americans doing things just as they are done on the other side, one might as well stay at home.

I run through the papers.

America, I see, is split into two camps. Two young ladies, Miss Nelly Bly and Miss Elizabeth Bisland, have left New York by opposite routes to go around the world, the former sent by the New York World, the latter by the Cosmopolitan. Which will be back first? is what all America is conjecturing upon. Bets have been made, and the betting is even. I do not know Miss Bly, but last time I came over I had the pleasure of making Miss Bisland's acquaintance. Naturally, as soon as I get on shore, I shall bet on Miss Bisland. You would do the same yourself, would you not?

I pass the day reading the papers. All the bits of news, insignificant or not, given in the shape of crisp, lively stories, help pass the time. They contain little information, but much amusement. The American newspaper always reminds me of a shop window with all the goods ticketed in a marvelous style, so as to attract and tickle the eye. You cannot pass over anything. The leading article is scarcely known across the "wet spot"; the paper is a collection of bits of gossip, hearsay, news, scandal, the whole served à la sauce piquante.

Nine o'clock.

We are passing the bar, and going to anchor. New York is sparkling with lights, and the Brooklyn Bridge is a thing of beauty. I will enjoy the scene for an hour, and then turn in.

We land to-morrow morning at seven.

Impressions of American Hotels

Boston, January 6.

Arrived here this afternoon, and resumed acquaintance with American hotels.

American hotels are all alike.

Some are worse.

Describe one and you have described them all.

On the ground floor, a large entrance hall strewed with cuspidores for the men, and a side entrance provided with a triumphal arch for the ladies. On this floor the sexes are separated as at the public baths.

[THE SAD-EYED CLERK.]

In the large hall, a counter behind which solemn clerks, whose business faces relax not a muscle, are ready with their book to enter your name and assign you a number. A small army of colored porters ready to take you in charge. Not a salute, not a word, not a smile of welcome. The negro takes your bag and makes a sign that your case is settled. You follow him. For the time being you lose your personality and become No. 375, as you would in jail. Don't ask questions; theirs not to answer; don't ring the bell to ask for a favor, if you set any value on your time. All the rules of the establishment are printed and posted in your bedroom; you have to submit to them. No question to ask--you know everything. Henceforth you will have to be hungry from 7 to 9 A.M.; from 1 to 3 P.M.; from 6 to 8 P.M. The slightest infringement of the routine would stop the wheel, so don't ask if you could have a meal at four o'clock; you would be taken for a lunatic, or a crank (as they call it in America).

Between meals you will be supplied with ice-water ad libitum.

No privacy. No coffee-room, no smoking-room. No place where you can go and quietly sip a cup of coffee or drink a glass of beer with a cigar. You can have a drink at the bar, and then go and sit down in the hall among the crowd.

Life in an American hotel is an alternation of the cellular system during the night and of the gregarious system during the day, an alternation of the penitentiary systems carried out at Philadelphia and at Auburn.

It is not in the bedroom, either, that you must seek anything to cheer you. The bed is good, but only for the night. The room is perfectly nude. Not even "Napoleon's Farewell to his Soldiers at Fontainebleau" as in France, or "Strafford walking to the Scaffold" as in England. Not that these pictures are particularly cheerful, still they break the monotony of the wall paper. Here the only oases in the brown or gray desert are cautions.

First of all, a notice that, in a cupboard near the window, you will find some twenty yards of coiled rope which, in case of fire, you are to fix to a hook outside the window. The rest is guessed. You fix the rope, and--you let yourself go. From a sixth, seventh, or eighth story, the prospect is lively. Another caution informs you of all that you must not do, such as your own washing in the bedroom. Another warns you that if, on retiring, you put your boots outside the door, you do so at your own risk and peril. Another is posted near the door, close to an electric bell. With a little care and practice, you will be able to carry out the instructions printed thereon. The only thing wonderful about the contrivance is that the servants never make mistakes.

[THE HOTEL FIRE ESCAPE.]

Press once for ice-water.
Press twice for hall boy.
Press three times for fireman.
Press four for chambermaid.
Press five for hot water.
Press six for ink and writing materials.
Press seven for baggage.
Press eight for messenger.

In some hotels I have seen the list carried to number twelve.

Another notice tells you what the proprietor's responsibilities are, and at what time the meals take place. Now this last notice is the most important of all. Woe to you if you forget it! For if you should present yourself one minute after the dining-room door is closed, no human consideration would get it open for you. Supplications, arguments would be of no avail. Not even money.

"What do you mean?" some old-fashioned European will exclaim. "When the table d'hôte is over, of course you cannot expect the menu to be served to you; but surely you can order a steak or a chop."

No, you cannot, not even an omelette or a piece of cold meat. If you arrive at one minute past three (in small towns, at one minute past two) you find the dining-room closed, and you must wait till six o'clock to see its hospitable doors open again.

---

When you enter the dining-room, you must not believe that you can go and sit where you like. The chief waiter assigns you a seat, and you must take it. With a superb wave of the hand, he signs to you to follow him. He does not even turn round to see if you are behind him, following him in all the meanders he describes, amid the sixty, eighty, sometimes hundred tables that are in the room. He takes it for granted you are an obedient, submissive traveler who knows his duty. Altogether I traveled in the United States for about ten months, and I never came across an American so daring, so independent, as to actually take any other seat than the one assigned to him by that tremendous potentate, the head waiter. Occasionally, just to try him, I would sit down in a chair I took a fancy to. But he would come and fetch me, and tell me that I could not stay there. In Europe, the waiter asks you where you would like to sit. In America, you ask him where you may sit. He is a paid servant, therefore a master in America. He is in command, not of the other waiters, but of the guests. Several times, recognizing friends in the dining-room, I asked the man to take me to their tables (I should not have dared go by myself), and the permission was granted with a patronizing sign of the head. I have constantly seen Americans stop on the threshold of the dining-room door, and wait until the chief waiter had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch them in their turn. I never saw them venture alone, and take an empty seat, without the sanction of the waiter.

[THE HEAD MAN.]

The guests feel struck with awe in that dining-room, and solemnly bolt their food as quickly as they can. You hear less noise in an American hotel dining-room containing five hundred people, than you do at a French table d'hôte accommodating fifty people, at a German one containing a dozen guests, or at a table where two Italians are dining tête-à-tête.

["LOOK LIKE DUSKY PRINCES."]

The head waiter, at large Northern and Western hotels, is a white man. In the Southern ones, he is a mulatto or a black; but white or black, he is always a magnificent specimen of his race. There is not a ghost of a savor of the serving man about him; no whiskers and shaven upper lips reminding you of the waiters of the Old World; but always a fine mustache, the twirling of which helps to give an air of nonchalant superiority to its wearer. The mulatto head-waiters in the South really look like dusky princes. Many of them are so handsome and carry themselves so superbly that you find them very impressive at first and would fain apologize to them. You feel as if you wanted to thank them for kindly condescending to concern themselves about anything so commonplace as your seat at table.

["SHE IS CROWNED WITH A GIGANTIC MASS OF FRIZZLED HAIR."]

In smaller hotels, the waiters are all waitresses. The "waiting" is done by damsels entirely--or rather by the guests of the hotel.

If the Southern head waiter looks like a prince, what shall we say of the head-waitress in the East, the North, and the West? No term short of queenly will describe her stately bearing as she moves about among her bevy of reduced duchesses. She is evidently chosen for her appearance. She is "divinely tall," as well as "most divinely fair," and, as if to add to her importance, she is crowned with a gigantic mass of frizzled hair. All the waitresses have this coiffure. It is a livery, as caps are in the Old World; but instead of being a badge of servitude it looks, and is, alarmingly emancipated--so much so that, before making close acquaintance with my dishes, I always examine them with great care. A beautiful mass of hair looks lovely on the head of a woman, but one in your soup, even if it had strayed from the tresses of your beloved one, would make the corners of your mouth go down, and the tip of your nose go up.

A regally handsome woman always "goes well in the landscape," as the French say, and I have seen specimens of these waitresses so handsome and so commanding-looking that, if they cared to come over to Europe and play the queens in London pantomimes, I feel sure they would command quite exceptional prices, and draw big salaries and crowded houses.

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The thing which strikes me most disagreeably, in the American hotel dining-room, is the sight of the tremendous waste of food that goes on at every meal. No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with this; but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most remarkable. In France, where, I venture to say, people live as well as anywhere else, if not better, there is a horror of anything like waste of good food. It is to me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the wanton manner in which some Americans will waste at one meal enough to feed several hungry fellow-creatures.

In the large hotels, conducted on the American plan, there are rarely fewer than fifty different dishes on the menu at dinner-time. Every day, and at every meal, you may see people order three times as much of this food as they could under any circumstances eat, and, after picking it and spoiling one dish after another, send the bulk away uneaten. I am bound to say that this practice is not only to be observed in hotels where the charge is so much per day, but in those conducted on the European plan, that is, where you pay for every item you order. There I notice that people proceed in much the same wasteful fashion. It is evidently not a desire to have more than is paid for, but simply a bad and ugly habit. I hold that about five hundred hungry people could be fed out of the waste that is going on at such large hotels as the Palmer House or the Grand Pacific Hotel of Chicago--and I have no doubt that such five hundred hungry people could easily be found in Chicago every day.

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I think that many Europeans are prevented from going to America by an idea that the expense of traveling and living there is very great. This is quite a delusion. For my part I find that hotels are as cheap in America as in England at any rate, and railway traveling in Pullman cars is certainly cheaper than in European first-class carriages, and incomparably more comfortable. Put aside in America such hotels as Delmonico's, the Brunswick in New York; the Richelieu in Chicago; and in England such hotels as the Metropôle, the Victoria, the Savoy; and take the good hotels of the country, such as the Grand Pacific at Chicago; the West House at Minneapolis, the Windsor at Montreal, the Cadillac at Detroit. I only mention those I remember as the very best. In these hotels, you are comfortably lodged and magnificently fed for from three to five dollars a day. In no good hotel of England, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, would you get the same amount of comfort, or even luxury, at the same price, and those who require a sitting-room get it for a little less than they would have to pay in a European hotel.

The only very dear hotels I have come across in the United States are those of Virginia. There I have been charged as much as two dollars a day, but never in my life did I pay so dear for what I had, never in my life did I see so many dirty rooms or so many messes that were unfit for human food.

But I will just say this much for the American refinement of feeling to be met with, even in the hotels of Virginia, even in the "lunch" rooms in small stations, you are supplied, at the end of each meal, with a bowl of water--to rinse your mouth.

A Connecticut Audience

From Meriden, January 8.

A Connecticut audience was a new experience to me. Yesterday I had a crowded room at the Opera House in Meriden; but if you had been behind the scenery, when I made my appearance on the stage, you would not have suspected it, for not one of the audience treated me to a little applause. I was frozen, and so were they. For a quarter of an hour I proceeded very cautiously, feeling the ground, as it were, as I went on. By that time, the thaw set in, and they began to smile. I must say that they had been very attentive from the beginning, and seemed very interested in the lecture. Encouraged by this, I warmed too. It was curious to watch that audience. By twos and threes the faces lit up with amusement till, by and by, the house wore quite an animated aspect. Presently there was a laugh, then two, then laughter more general. All the ice was gone. Next, a bold spirit in the stalls ventured some applause. At his second outburst he had company. The uphill work was nearly over now, and I began to feel better. The infection spread up to the circles and the gallery, and at last there came a real good hearty round of applause. I had "fetched" them after all. But it was tough work. When once I had them in hand, I took good care not to let them go.

---

I visited several interesting establishments this morning. Merry Meriden is famous for its manufactories of electro-plated silverware. Unfortunately I am not yet accustomed to the heated rooms of America, and I could not stay in the show-rooms more than a few minutes. I should have thought the heat was strong enough to melt all the goods on view. This town looks like a bee-hive of activity, with its animated streets, its electric cars. Dear old Europe! With the exception of a few large cities, the cars are still drawn by horses, like in the time of Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar.

---

On arriving at the station a man took hold of my bag and asked to take care of it until the arrival of the train. I do not know whether he belonged to the hotel where I spent the night, or to the railroad company. Whatever he was, I felt grateful for this wonderful show of courtesy.

"I heard you last night at the Opera House," he said to me.

"Why, were you at the lecture?"

"Yes, sir, and I greatly enjoyed it."

"Well, why didn't you laugh sooner?" I said.

"I wanted to very much!"

"Why didn't you?"

["I WAS AT YOUR LECTURE LAST NIGHT."]

"Well, sir, I couldn't very well laugh before the rest."

"Why didn't you give the signal?"

"You see, sir," he said, "we are in Connecticut."

"Is laughter prohibited by the Statute Book in Connecticut?" I remarked.

"No, sir, but if you all laugh at the same time, then----"

"I see, nobody can tell who is the real criminal."

The train arrived. I shook hands with my friend, after offering him half a dollar for holding my bag--which he refused--and went on board.

In the parlor car, I met my kind friend Colonel Charles H. Taylor, editor of that very successful paper, the Boston Globe. We had luncheon together in the dining car, and time passed delightfully in his company till we reached the Grand Central station, New York, when we parted. He was kind enough to make me promise to look him up in Boston in a fortnight's time, when I make my second appearance in the City of Culture.

The Flourishing Of Coats-Of-Arms In America

New York, January 11.

There are in America, as in many other countries of the world, people who have coats-of-arms, and whose ancestors had no arms to their coats.

This remark was suggested by the reading of the following paragraph in the New York World this morning:

There is growing in this country the rotten influence of rank, pride of station, contempt for labor, scorn of poverty, worship of caste, such as we verily believe is growing in no country in the world. What are the ideals that fill so large a part of the day and generation? For the boy it is riches; for the girl the marrying of a title. The ideal of this time in America is vast riches and the trappings of rank. It is good that proper scorn should be expressed of such ideals.

American novelists, journalists, and preachers are constantly upbraiding and ridiculing their countrywomen for their love of titled foreigners; but the society women of the great Republic only love the foreign lords all the more; and I have heard some of them openly express their contempt of a form of government whose motto is one of the clauses of the great Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal." I really believe that if the society women of America had their own way, they would set up a monarchy to-morrow, in the hope of seeing an aristocracy established as the sequel of it.

[A TITLE.]

President Garfield once said that the only real coats-of-arms in America were shirt-sleeves. The epigram is good, but not based on truth, as every epigram should be. Labor in the States is not honorable for its own sake, but only if it brings wealth. President Garfield's epigram "fetched" the crowd, no doubt, as any smart democratic or humanitarian utterance will anywhere, whether it be emitted from the platform, the stage, the pulpit, or the hustings; but if any American philosopher heard it, he must have smiled.

A New York friend who called on me this morning, and with whom I had a chat on this subject, assured me that there is now such a demand in the States for pedigrees, heraldic insignia, mottoes, and coronets, that it has created a new industry. He also informed me that almost every American city has a college of heraldry, which will provide unbroken lines of ancestors, and make to order a new line of forefathers "of the most approved pattern, with suitable arms, etc."

Addison's prosperous foundling, who ordered at the second-hand picture-dealer's "a complete set of ancestors," is, according to my friend, a typical personage to be met with in the States nowadays.

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Bah! after all, every country has her snobs. Why should America be an exception to the rule? When I think of the numberless charming people I have met in this country, I may as well leave it to the Europeans who have come in contact with American snobs to speak about them, inasmuch as the subject is not particularly entertaining.

What amuses me much more here is the effect of democracy on what we Europeans would call the lower classes.

A few days ago, in a hotel, I asked a porter if my trunk had arrived from the station and had been taken to my room.

"I don't know," he said majestically; "you ask that gentleman."

The gentleman pointed out to me was the negro who looks after the luggage in the establishment.

In the papers you may read in the advertisement columns: "Washing wanted by a lady at such and such address."

[THE NEW YORK CABMAN.]

The cabman will ask, "If you are the man as wants a gentleman to drive him to the deepo."

During an inquiry concerning the work-house at Cambridge, Mass., a witness spoke of the "ladies' cells," as being all that should be desired.

Democracy, such is thy handiwork!

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I went to the Stock Exchange in Wall Street at one o'clock. I thought that Whitechapel, on Saturday night, was beyond competition as a scene of rowdyism. I have now altered this opinion. I am still wondering whether I was not guyed by my pilot, and whether I was not shown the playground of a madhouse, at the time when all the most desperate lunatics are let loose.

After lunch I went to Falk's photograph studio to be taken, and read the first page of "Jonathan and His Continent," into his phonograph. Marvelous, this phonograph! I imagine Mr. Falk has the best collection of cylinders in the world. I heard a song by Patti, the piano played by Von Bülow, speeches, orchestras, and what not! The music is reproduced most faithfully. With the voice the instrument is not quite so successful. Instead of your own voice, you fancy you hear an imitation of it by Punch. All the same, it seems to me to be the wonder of the age.

After paying a few calls, and dining quietly at the Everett House, I went to the Metropolitan Opera House, and saw "The Barber of Bagdad." Cornelius's music is Wagnerian in aim, but I did not carry away with me a single bar of all I heard. After all, this is perhaps the aim of Wagnerian music.

What a sight is the Metropolitan Opera House, with its boxes full of lovely women, arrayed in gorgeous garments, and blazing with diamonds! What luxury! What wealth is gathered there!

How interesting it would be to know the exact amount of wealth of which New York can boast! In this morning's papers I read that land on Fifth Avenue has lately sold for $115 a square foot. In an acre of land there are 43,560 square feet, which at $115 a foot would be $5,009,400 an acre. Just oblige me by thinking of it!

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January 12.

Went to the Catholic Cathedral at eleven. A mass by Haydn was splendidly rendered by full orchestra and admirable chorus. The altar was a blaze of candles. The yellow of the lights and the plain mauve of two windows, one on each side of the candles, gave a most beautiful crocus-bed effect. I enjoyed the service.

In the evening I dined with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, editor of the North American Review, at the splendid residence of his father-in-law, Mr. Cooper, late Mayor of New York. Mrs. Lloyd Bryce is one of the handsomest American women I have met, and a most charming and graceful hostess. I reluctantly left early so as to prepare for my night journey to Buffalo.

Buffalo

Buffalo, January 14.

This town is situated twenty-seven miles from Niagara Falls. The Americans say that the Buffalo people can hear the noise of the water-fall quite distinctly. I am quite prepared to believe it. However, an hour's journey by rail and then a quarter of an hour's sleigh ride will take you from Buffalo within sight of this, perhaps the grandest piece of scenery in the world. Words cannot describe it. You spend a couple of hours visiting every point of view. You are nailed, as it were, to the ground, feeling like a pigmy, awestruck in the presence of nature at her grandest. The snow was falling thickly, and though it made the view less clear, it added to the grandeur of the scene.

I went down by the cable car to a level with the rapids and the place where poor Captain Webb was last seen alive; a presumptuous pigmy, he, to dare such waters as these. His widow keeps a little bazaar near the falls and sells souvenirs to the visitors.

It was most thrilling to stand within touching distance of that great torrent of water, called the Niagara Falls, in distinction to the Horseshoe Falls, to hear the roar of it as it fell. The idea of force it gives one is tremendous. You stand and wonder how many ages it has been roaring on, what eyes besides your own have gazed awestruck at its mighty rushing, and wonder if the pigmies will ever do what they say they will; one day make those columns of water their servants to turn wheels at their bidding.

[SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.]

We crossed the bridge over to the Canadian side, and there we had the whole grand panorama before our eyes.

It appears that it is quite a feasible thing to run the rapids in a barrel. Girls have done it, and it may become the fashionable sport for American girls in the near future. It has been safely accomplished plenty of times by young fellows up for an exciting day's sport.

On the Canadian shore was a pretty villa where Princess Louise stayed while she painted the scene. Some of the pretty houses were fringed all round the roofs and balconies in the loveliest way, with icicles a yard long, and loaded with snow. They looked most beautiful.

On the way back we called at Prospect House, a charming hotel which I hope, if ever I go near Buffalo again, I shall put up at for a day or two, to see the neighborhood well.

Two years ago I was lucky enough to witness a most curious sight. The water was frozen under the falls, and a natural bridge, formed by the ice, was being used by venturesome people to cross the Niagara River on. This occurs very seldom.

---

I have had a fizzle to-night. I almost expected it. In a hall that could easily have accommodated fifteen hundred people, I lectured to an audience of about three hundred. Fortunately they proved so intelligent, warm, and appreciative that I did not feel at all depressed; but my impresario did. However, he congratulated me on having been able to do justice to the causerie, as if I had had a bumper house.

I must own that it is much easier to be a tragedian than a light comedian before a $200 house.

---

Cleveland, O., January 15.

The weather is so bad that I shall be unable to see anything of this city, which, people tell me, is very beautiful.

On arriving at the Weddell House, I met a New York friend.

"Well," said he, "how are you getting on? Where do you come from?"

"From Buffalo," said I, pulling a long face.

"What is the matter? Don't you like the Buffalo people?"

"Yes; I liked those I saw. I should have liked to extend my love to a larger number. I had a fizzle; about three hundred people. Perhaps I drew all the brain of Buffalo."

"How many people do you say you had in the hall?" said my friend.

"About three hundred."

"Then you must have drawn a good many people from Rochester, I should think," said he quite solemnly.

In reading the Buffalo newspapers this morning, I noticed favorable criticisms of my lecture; but while my English was praised, so far as the language went, severe comments were passed on my pronunciation. In England, where the English language is spoken with a decent pronunciation, I never once read a condemnation of my pronunciation of the English language.

I will not appear again in Buffalo until I feel much improved.

---

["GOING TO PITTSBURG, I GUESS."]

En route to Pittsburg, January 16.

The American railway stations have special waiting rooms for ladies--not, as in England, places furnished with looking-glasses, where they can go and arrange their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they can wait for the trains, protected against the contamination of man, and where they are spared the sight of that eternal little round piece of furniture with which the floors of the whole of the United States are dotted.

At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan, such as he is represented in the comic papers of the world. A man of sixty, with long straight white hair falling over his shoulders; no mustache, long imperial beard, a razor-blade-shaped nose, small keen eyes, and high prominent cheek-bones, the whole smoking the traditional cigar; the Anglo-Saxon indianized--Jonathan. If he had had a long swallow-tail coat on, a waistcoat ornamented with stars, and trowsers with stripes, he might have sat for the cartoons of Puck or Judge.

In the car, Jonathan came and sat opposite me. A few minutes after the train had started, he said:

"Going to Pittsburg, I guess."

"Yes," I replied.

"To lecture?"

"Oh, you know I lecture?"

"Why, certainly; I heard you in Boston ten days ago."

He offered me a cigar, told me his name--I mean his three names--what he did, how much he earned, where he lived, how many children he had; he read me a poem of his own composition, invited me to go and see him, and entertained me for three hours and a half, telling me the history of his life, etc. Indeed, it was Jonathan.

---

All the Americans I have met have written a poem (pronounced pome). Now I am not generalizing. I do not say that all the Americans have written a poem, I say all the Americans I have met.

---

Pittsburg (same day later).

I lecture here to-night under the auspices of the Press Club of the town. The president of the club came to meet me at the station, in order to show me something of the town.

I like Pittsburg very much. From the top of the hill, which you reach in a couple of minutes by the cable car, there is a most beautiful sight to contemplate: one never to be forgotten. On our way to the hotel, my kind friend took me to a fire station, and asked the man in command of the place to go through the performance of a fire-call for my own edification.

Now, in two words, here is the thing.

You touch the fire bell in your own house. That causes the name of your street and the number of your house to appear in the fire station; it causes all the doors of the station to open outward. Wait a minute--it causes whips which are hanging behind the horses, to lash them and send them under harnesses that fall upon them and are self-adjusting; it causes the men, who are lying down on the first floor, to slide down an incline and fall on the box and steps of the cart. And off they gallop. It takes about two minutes to describe it as quickly as possible. It only takes fourteen seconds to do it. It is the nearest approach to phantasmagoria that I have yet seen in real life.

Notes On American Women

New York, January 18.

A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married twenty years without being able to understand his wife. "You should not complain of that," remarked the friend. "I have been married to my wife two years only, and I understand her perfectly."

The leaders of thought in France have long ago proclaimed that woman was the only problem it was not given to man to solve. They have all tried, and they have all failed. They all acknowledge it--but they are trying still.

Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every Frenchman is never exhausted. Parodying Terence, he says to himself, "I am a man, and all that concerns woman interests me." All the French modern novels are studies, analytical, dissecting studies, of woman's heart.

To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes appear a trifle puerile, if not also ridiculous. But to understand this feeling, one must remember how a Frenchman is brought up.

In England, boys and girls meet and play together; in America and Canada, they sit side by side on the same benches at school, not only as children of tender age, but at College and in the Universities. They get accustomed to each other's company; they see nothing strange in being in contact with one another, and this naturally tends to reduce the interest or curiosity one sex takes in the other. But in France they are apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they can meet when they have attained the age of twenty!

Strange to reflect that young people of both sexes can meet in ball-rooms without exciting their parents' suspicions, and that they cannot do so in class-rooms!

When I was a boy at school in France, I can well remember how we boys felt on the subject. If we heard that a young girl, say the sister of some school-fellow, was with her mother in the common parlor to see her brother, why, it created a commotion, a perfect revolution in the whole establishment. It was no use trying to keep us in order. We would climb on the top of the seats or of the tables to endeavor to see something of her, even if it were but the top of her hat, or a bit of her gown across the recreation yard at the very end of the building. It was an event. Many of us would even immediately get inspired and compose verses addressed to the unknown fair visitor. In these poetical effusions we would imagine the young girl carried off by some miscreant, and we would fly to her rescue, save her, and throw ourselves at her feet to receive her hand as our reward. Yes, we would get quite romantic or, in plain English, quite silly. We could not imagine that a woman was a reasoning being with whom you can talk on the topics of the day, or have an ordinary conversation on any ordinary subject. To us a woman was a being with whom you can only talk of love, or fall in love, or, maybe, for whom you may die of love.

This manner of training young men goes a long way toward explaining the position of woman in France as well as her ways. It explains why a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman, when they converse together, seldom can forget that one is a man and the other a woman. It does not prove that a Frenchwoman must necessarily be, and is, affected in her relations with men; but it explains why she does not feel, as the American woman does, that a man and woman can enjoy a tête-à-tête free from all those commonplace flatteries, compliments, and platitudes that badly-understood gallantry suggests. Many American ladies have made me forget, by the easiness of their manner and the charm and naturalness of their conversation, that I was speaking with women, and with lovely ones, too. This I could never have forgotten in the company of French ladies.

On account of this feeling, and perhaps also of the difference which exists between the education received by a man and that received by a woman in France, the conversation will always be on some light topics, literary, artistic, dramatic, social, or other. Indeed, it would be most unbecoming for a man to start a very serious subject of conversation with a French lady to whom he had just been introduced. He would be taken for a pedant or a man of bad breeding.

In America, men and women receive practically the same education, and this of course enlarges the circle of conversation between the sexes. I shall always remember a beautiful American girl, not more than twenty years of age, to whom I was once introduced in New York, as she was giving to a lady sitting next to her a most detailed description of the latest bonnet invented in Paris, and who, turning toward me, asked me point-blank if I had read M. Ernest Renan's "History of the People of Israel." I had to confess that I had not yet had time to read it. But she had, and she gave me, without the remotest touch of affectation or pedantry, a most interesting and learned analysis of that remarkable work. I related this incident in "Jonathan and his Continent." On reading it, some of my countrymen, critics and others, exclaimed: "We imagine the fair American girl had a pair of gold spectacles on."

"No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No gold spectacles, no guy. It was a beautiful girl, dressed with most exquisite taste and care, and most charming and womanly."

An American woman, however learned she may be, is a sound politician, and she knows that the best thing she can make of herself is a woman, and she remains a woman. She will always make herself as attractive as she possibly can. Not to please men--I believe she has a great contempt for them--but to please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were to remark to a lady how clever some woman in the room looked, she would probably closely examine that woman's dress to find out what I thought was wrong about it. It would probably be the same in England, but not in America.

A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another woman's cleverness. She will far more readily forgive her this qualification than beauty. And in this particular point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman resembles all the women in the Old World.

---

Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in declaring that the American ones are the least affected. With them, I repeat it, I feel at ease as I do with no other women in the world.

With whom but an Américaine would the following little scene have been possible?

I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to be the reception day of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine and my wife's, I thought I would call upon her early, before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I went to the house about half-past three in the afternoon. Mrs. X. received me in the drawing-room, and we were soon talking on the hundred and one topics that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently the conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X. drew her chair up a little nearer to the fire, put the toes of her little slippers on the fender stool, and with a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural, manner, said:

"You are married and love your wife; I am married and love my husband; we are both artists, let's have our say out."

And we proceeded to have our say out.

But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the seam of her black silk bodice was unsewn. We men, when we see a lady with something awry in her toilette, how often do we long to say to her: "Excuse me, madam, but perhaps you don't know that you have a hairpin sticking out two inches just behind your ear," or "Pardon me, Miss, I'm a married man, there is something wrong there behind, just under your waist belt."

Now I felt for Mrs. X., who was just going to receive a crowd of callers with a little rent in one of her bodice seams, and tried to persuade myself to be brave and tell her of it. Yet I hesitated. People take things so differently. The conversation went on unflagging. At last I could not stand it any longer.

"Mrs. X.," said I, all in a breath, "you are married and love your husband; I am married and love my wife; we are both artists; there is a little bit of seam come unsewn, just there by your arm, run and get it sewn up!"

The peals of laughter that I heard going on upstairs, while the damage was being repaired, proved to me that there was no resentment to be feared, but, on the contrary, that I had earned the gratitude of Mrs. X.

---

In many respects I have often been struck with the resemblance which exists between French and American women. When I took my first walk on Broadway, New York, on a fine afternoon some two years and a half ago, I can well remember how I exclaimed: "Why, this is Paris, and all these ladies are Parisiennes;" It struck me as being the same type of face, the same animation of features, the same brightness of the eyes, the same self-assurance, the same attractive plumpness in women over thirty. To my mind, I was having a walk on my own Boulevards (every Parisian owns that place). The more I became acquainted with American ladies, the more forcibly this resemblance struck me. This was not a mere first impression. It has been, and is still, a deep conviction; so much so that whenever I returned to New York from a journey of some weeks in the heart of the country, I felt as if I was returning home.

After a short time, a still closer resemblance between the women of the two countries will strike a Frenchman most forcibly. It is the same finesse, the same suppleness of mind, the same wonderful adaptability. Place a little French milliner in a good drawing-room for an hour, and at the end of that time she will behave, talk, and walk like any lady in the room. Suppose an American, married below his status in society, is elected President of the United States, I believe, at the end of a week, this wife of his would do the honors of the White House with the ease and grace of a highborn lady.

In England it is just the contrary.

Of course good society is good society everywhere. The ladies of the English aristocracy are perfect queens; but the Englishwoman, who was not born a lady, will seldom become a lady, and I believe this is why mésalliances are more scarce in England than in America, and especially in France. I could name many Englishmen at the head of their professions, who cannot produce their wives in society because these women have not been able to raise themselves to the level of their husbands' station in life. The Englishwoman, as a rule, has no faculty for fitting herself for a higher position than the one she was born in; like a rabbit, she will often taste of the cabbage she fed on. And I am bound to add that this is perhaps a quality, and proves the truthfulness of her character. She is no actress.

In France, the mésalliance, though not relished by parents, is not feared so much, because they know the young woman will observe and study, and very soon fit herself for her new position.

And while on this subject of mésalliance, why not try to destroy an absurd prejudice that exists in almost every country on the subject of France?

It is, I believe, the firm conviction of foreigners that Frenchmen marry for money, that is to say, that all Frenchmen marry for money. As a rule, when people discuss foreign social topics, they have a wonderful faculty for generalization.

The fact that many Frenchmen do marry for money is not to be denied, and the explanation of it is this: We have in France a number of men belonging to a class almost unknown in other countries, small bourgeois of good breeding and genteel habits, but relatively poor, who occupy posts in the different Government offices. Their name is legion and their salary something like two thousand francs ($400). These men have an appearance to keep up, and, unless a wife brings them enough to at least double their income, they cannot marry. These young men are often sought after by well-to-do parents for their daughters, because they are steady, cultured, gentlemanly, and occupy an honorable position, which brings them a pension for their old age. With the wife's dowry, the couple can easily get along, and lead a peaceful, uneventful, and happy jog-trot life, which is the great aim of the majority of the French people.

But, on the other hand, there is no country where you will see so many cases of mésalliance as France, and this alone should dispose of the belief that Frenchmen marry for money. Indeed, it is a most common thing for a young Frenchman of good family to fall in love with a girl of a much lower station of life than his own, to court her, at first with perhaps only the idea of killing time or of starting a liaison, to soon discover that the girl is highly respectable, and to finally marry her. This is a most common occurrence. French parents frown on this sort of thing, and do their best to discourage it, of course; but rather than cross their son's love, they give their consent, and trust to that adaptability of Frenchwomen, of which I was speaking just now, to raise herself to her husband's level and make a wife he will never be ashamed of.

---

The Frenchman is the slave of his womankind, but not in the same way as the American is. The Frenchman is brought up by his mother, and remains under her sway till she dies. When he marries, his wife leads him by the nose (an operation which he seems to enjoy), and when, besides, he has a daughter, on whom he generally dotes, this lady soon joins the other two in ruling this easy-going, good-humored man. As a rule, when you see a Frenchman, you behold a man who is kept in order by three generations of women: mother, wife, and daughter.

The American will lavish attention and luxury on his wife and daughters, but he will save them the trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His business is his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun and glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to enjoy as soon as he can throw away the cares of his business. In France, a wife is a partner, a cashier who takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock and speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both cashier and bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, Paris included, and behind "Pay Here," you will see Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money for the purchase you have made. When I said she is a partner, I might safely have said that she is the active partner, and, as a rule, by far the shrewder of the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, her fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and many a customer whom her husband was allowing to go away without a purchase, has been brought back by the wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop. Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany, to spend a few days visiting the Exposition. One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards to buy a white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats which the man showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and I declined to buy one. I was just going to leave, when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and said: "But, Adolphe, why do you let Monsieur go? Perhaps he does not care to follow the fashion. We have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last year that we can let Monsieur have à bon compte. They are upstairs, go and fetch them." And, sure enough, there was one which fitted and pleased me, and I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, which the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, but which the wife managed to secure for the firm.

[MADAM IS THE CASHIER.]

No one who has lived in France has failed to be struck with the intelligence of the women, and there exist few Frenchmen who do not readily admit how intellectually inferior they are to their countrywomen, chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this is not due to any special training, for the education received by the women of that class is of the most limited kind; they are taught to read, write, and reckon, and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hundred cents' worth for every dollar they spend. How to make a house look pretty and attractive with small outlay; how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet with a few knick-knacks; how to make a savory dish out of a small remnant of beef, mutton, and veal; all that is a science not to be despised when a husband, in receipt of a four or five hundred dollar salary, wants to make a good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No doubt the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in London, and the plutocracy of New York, may think all this very small, and these French people very uninteresting. They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that such people may live on such incomes and look decent. But they do live, and live very happy lives, too. And I will go so far as to say that happiness, real happiness, is chiefly found among people of limited income. The husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly by a dollar every week, so as to be able to give his dear wife a nice present at Christmas, gives her a far more valuable, a far better appreciated present, than the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond rivière to his wife. That quiet young French couple, whom you see at the upper circle of a theater, and who have saved the money to enable them to come and hear such and such a play, are happier than the occupants of the boxes on the first tier. If you doubt it, take your opera glasses, and "look on this picture, and on this."

[THE UPPER CIRCLE.]

In observing nations, I have always taken more interest in the "million," who differ in every country, than in the "upper ten," who are alike all over the world. People who have plenty of money at their disposal generally discover the same way of spending it, and adopt the same mode of living. People who have only a small income show their native instincts in the intelligent use of it. All these differ, and these only are worth studying, unless you belong to the staff of a "society" paper. (As a Frenchman, I am glad to say we have no "society" papers. England and America are the only two countries in the world where these official organs of Anglo-Saxon snobbery can be found, and I should not be surprised to hear that Australia possessed some of these already.)

---

[THE SAD-EYED OCCUPANTS OF THE BOX.]

The source of French happiness is to be found in the thrift of the women, from the best middle class to the peasantry. This thrift is also the source of French wealth. A nation is really wealthy when the fortunes are stable, however small. We have no railway kings, no oil kings, no silver kings, but we have no tenement houses, no Unions, no Work-houses. Our lower classes do not yet ape the upper class people, either in their habits or dress. The wife of a peasant or of a mechanic wears a simple snowy cap, and a serge or cotton dress. The wife of a shopkeeper does not wear any jewelry because she cannot afford to buy real stones, and her taste is too good to allow of her wearing false ones. She is not ashamed of her husband's occupation; she does not play the fine lady while he is at work. She saves him the expense of a cashier or of an extra clerk by helping him in his business. When the shutters are up, she enjoys life with him, and is the companion of his pleasures as well as of his hardships. Club life is unknown in France, except among the upper classes. Man and wife are constantly together, and France is a nation of Darbys and Joans. There is, I believe, no country where men and women go through life on such equal terms as in France.

---

In England (and here again I speak of the masses only), the man thinks himself a much superior being to the woman. It is the same in Germany. In America, I should feel inclined to believe that a woman looks down upon a man with a certain amount of contempt. She receives at his hands attentions of all sorts, but I cannot say, as I have remarked before, that I have ever discovered in her the slightest trace of gratitude to man.

I have often tried to explain to myself this gentle contempt of American ladies for the male sex; for, contrasting it with the lovely devotion of Jonathan to his womankind, it is a curious enigma. Have I found the solution at last? Does it begin at school? In American schools, boys and girls, from the age of five, follow the same path to learning, and sit side by side on the same benches. Moreover, the girls prove themselves capable of keeping pace with the boys. Is it not possible that those girls, as they watched the performances of the boys in the study, learned to say, "Is that all?" While the young lords of creation, as they have looked on at what "those girls" can do, have been fain to exclaim: "Who would have thought it!" And does not this explain the two attitudes: the great respect of men for women, and the mild contempt of women for men?

Very often, in New York, when I had time to saunter about, I would go up Broadway and wait until a car, well crammed with people, came along. Then I would jump on board and stand near the door. Whenever a man wanted to get out, he would say to me "Please," or "Excuse me," or just touch me lightly to warn me that I stood in his way. But the women! Oh, the women! why, it was simply lovely. They would just push me away with the tips of their fingers, and turn up such disgusted and haughty noses! You would have imagined it was a heap of dirty rubbish in their way.

---

Would you have a fair illustration of the respective positions of woman in France, in England, and in America?

Go to a hotel, and watch the arrival of couples in the dining-room.

Now don't go to the Louvre, the Grand Hotel, or the Bristol, in Paris. Don't go to the Savoy, the Victoria, or the Metropole, in London. Don't go to the Brunswick, in New York, because in all these hotels you will see that all behave alike. Go elsewhere and, I say, watch.

In France, you will see the couples arrive together, walk abreast toward the table assigned to them, very often arm in arm, and smiling at each other--though married.

[IN FRANCE.]

In England, you will see John Bull leading the way. He does not like to be seen eating in public, and thinks it very hard that he should not have the dining-room all to himself. So he enters, with his hands in his pockets, looking askance at everybody right and left. Then, meek and demure, with her eyes cast down, follows Mrs. John Bull.

[IN ENGLAND.]

In America, behold the dignified, nay, the majestic entry of Mrs. Jonathan, a perfect queen going toward her throne, bestowing a glance on her subjects right and left--and Jonathan behind!

[IN AMERICA.]

They say in France that Paris is the paradise of women. If so, there is a more blissful place than paradise; there is another word to invent to give an idea of the social position enjoyed by American ladies.

If I had to be born again, and might choose my sex and my birthplace, I would shout at the top of my voice:

"Oh, make me an American woman!"

Marcus Aurelius In America

New York, January 22.

There are indeed very few Americans who have not either tact or a sense of humor. They make the best of chairmen. They know that the audience have not come to hear them, and that all that is required of them is to introduce the lecturer in very few words, and to give him a good start. Who is the lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me yesterday to a New York audience in the following manner?

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, "the story goes that, last summer, a party of Americans staying in Rome paid a visit to the famous Spithöver's bookshop in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spithöver is the most learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need artistic and archæological works of the profoundest research and erudition. But one of the ladies in this tourists' party only wanted the lively travels in America of Max O'Rell, and she asked for the book at Spithöver's. There came in a deep guttural voice--an Anglo-German voice--from a spectacled clerk behind a desk, to this purport: 'Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in te Unided Shtaates!' But, ladies and gentlemen, he is now, and here he is."

With such an introduction, I was immediately in touch with my audience.

What a change after English chairmen!

A few days before lecturing in any English town, under the auspices of a Literary Society or Mechanics' Institute, the lecturer generally receives from the secretary a letter running somewhat as follow:

DEAR SIR:

I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one of our vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the chair at your lecture.

Translated into plain English, this reads:

My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture before the members of our Society.

In my few years' lecturing experience, I have come across all sorts and conditions of chairmen, but I can recollect very few that "have helped me." Now, what is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions? He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the audience. For this he needs to be able to make a neat speech. He has to tell the audience who the lecturer is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the case. I was once introduced to an audience who knew me, by a chairman who, I don't think, had ever heard of me in his life. Before going on the platform he asked me whether I had written anything, next whether I was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.

["MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!"]

Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and haws, cannot find the words he wants, and only succeeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes, on the other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was once introduced to a New York audience by General Horace Porter. Those of my readers who know the delightful general and have heard him deliver one of those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable manner, will agree with me that certainly there was danger in that; and they will not be surprised when I tell them that after his delightfully witty and graceful little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show was over.

Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate of the neighborhood, though he may be noted for his long, prosy orations--which annoy the public; or to a very popular man in the locality who gets all the applause--which annoys the lecturer.

"Brevity is the soul of wit," should be the motto of chairmen, and I sympathize with a friend of mine who says that chairmen, like little boys and girls, should be seen and not heard.

Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch ones are generally good. They have a knack of starting the evening with some droll Scotch anecdote, told with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasionally they will also make apropos and equally droll little speeches at the close. One evening, in talking of America, I had mentioned the fact that American banquets were very lively, and that I thought the fact of Americans being able to keep up such a flow of wit for so many hours, was perhaps due to their drinking Apollinaris water instead of stronger things after dessert. At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said he had greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take exception to one statement the lecturer had made, for he thought it "fery deeficult to be wutty on Apollinaris watter."

Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your finish, and stops all the possibility of your being called back for applause, by coming forward, the very instant the last words are out of your mouth, to inform the audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr. So-and-So, or to make a statement of the Society's financial position, concluding by appealing to the members to induce their friends to join.

Then there is the chairman who does not know what you are going to talk about, but thinks it his duty to give the audience a kind of summary of what he imagines the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he is nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over, will persist in summing it up, and explaining your own jokes, especially the ones he has not quite seen through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet invented.

Some modest chairmen apologize for standing between the lecturer and the audience, and declare they cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak a minute only, but don't.

[THE CHAIRMAN.]

"What shall I speak about?" said a chairman to me one day, after I had been introduced to him in the little back room behind the platform.

"If you will oblige me, sir," I replied, "kindly speak about--one minute."

Once I was introduced to the audience as the promoter of good feelings between France and England.

"Sometimes," said the chairman, "we see clouds of misunderstanding arise between the French--between the English--between the two. The lecturer of this evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds--these clouds--to--to---- But I will not detain you any longer. His name is familiar to all of us. I'm sure he needs no introduction to this audience. We all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing to you Mr.--Mosshiay--Mr. ----" Then he looked at me in despair.

It was evident he had forgotten my name.

"Max O'Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at," I whispered to him.

---

The most objectionable chairmen in England are, perhaps, local men holding civic honors. Accustomed to deliver themselves of a speech whenever and wherever they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors, members of local boards, and school boards, never miss an opportunity of getting upon a platform to address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was introduced to an audience in a large English city by a candidate for civic honors. The election of the town council was to take place a fortnight afterward, and this gentleman profited by the occasion to air all his grievances against the sitting council, and to assure the citizens that if they would only elect him, there were bright days in store for them and their city. This was the gist of the matter. The speech lasted twenty minutes.

["HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME?"]

Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lancashire city, and the hall was crowded. "What a fine house!" I remarked to the chairman as we sat down on the platform.

"Very fine indeed," he said; "everybody in the town knew I was going to take the chair."

I was sorry I had spoken.

More than once, when announced to deliver a lecture on France and the French, I have been introduced by a chairman who, having spent his holidays in that country once or twice, opened the evening's proceedings by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have felt very tempted to imitate a confrère, and say to the audience: "Ladies and Gentlemen, as one lecture on France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would rather I spoke about something else now." The confrère I have just mentioned was to deliver a lecture on Charles Dickens one evening. The chairman knew something of Charles Dickens and, for quite a quarter of an hour, spoke on the great English novelist, giving anecdotes, extracts of his writings, etc. When the lecturer rose, he said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, two lectures on Charles Dickens are perhaps more than you expected to hear to-night. You have just heard a lecture on Charles Dickens. I am now going to give you one on Charles Kingsley."

Sometimes I get a little amusement, however (as in the country town of X.), out of the usual proceedings of the society before whose members I am engaged to appear. At X., the audience being assembled and the time up, I was told to go on the platform alone and, being there, to immediately sit down. So I went on, and sat down. Some one in the room then rose and proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N., it appeared, had been to Boulogne (to B'long), and was particularly fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a speech of about five minutes duration, all Mr. N.'s qualifications for the post of chairman that evening were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and seconded the proposition, re-enumerating most of these qualifications. Mr. N. then marched up the hall, ascended the platform, and proceeded to return thanks for the kind manner in which he had been proposed for the chair and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had applauded) with which the audience had sanctioned the choice. He said it was true that he had been in France, and that he greatly admired the country and the people, and he was glad to have this opportunity to say so before a Frenchman. Then he related some of his traveling impressions in France. A few people coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet, but he took no heed and, for ten minutes, he gave the audience the benefit of the information he had gathered in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I gave my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member of the audience to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer "for the most amusing and interesting discourse, etc."

Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work is over, and although a vote of thanks, when it is spontaneous, is a compliment which he greatly appreciates, he is more likely to feel awkwardness than pleasure when it is a mere red-tape formality. The vote of thanks, on this particular occasion, was proposed in due form. Then it was seconded by some one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled them. By this time I began to enter into the fun of the thing, and, after having returned thanks for the vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward again, filled with a mild resolve to have the last word:

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, "I have now much pleasure in proposing that a hearty vote of thanks be given Mr. N. for the able manner in which he has filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced to you by an Englishman who knows my country so well." I went again through the list of Mr. N.'s qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose and seconded this. Mr. N. delivered a speech to thank the audience once more, and then those who had survived went home.

Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or humorous lecturer, put him in their chapel, and open his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good, but I would as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of beginning my lecture with a prayer. This kind of experience has been mine several times. A truly trying experience it was, on the first occasion, to be accompanied to the platform by the minister, who, motioning me to sit down, advanced to the front, lowered his head, and said in solemn accents: "Let us pray." After I got started, it took me fully ten minutes to make the people realize that they were not at church. This experience I have had in America as well as in England. Another experience in this line was still worse, for the prayer was supplemented by the singing of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily imagine that my first remark fell dead flat.

I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo, Meshoe, and Mounzeer O'Reel, and other British adaptations of our word Monsieur, and found it very difficult to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated a name which I had taken some care to keep correctly spelt before the public. Yet this man is charming when compared with the one who, in the midst of his introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage whisper perfectly audible all over the hall, asks: "How do you pronounce your name?"

Passing over chairman chatty and chairman terse, chairman eloquent and chairman the reverse, I feel decidedly most kindly toward the silent chairman. He is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is exceedingly precious. Why he exists, in some English Institutes, I have always been at a loss to imagine. Whether he comes on to see that the lecturer does not run off before his time is up, or with the water bottle, which is the only portable thing on the platform generally; whether he is a successor to some venerable deaf and dumb founder of his Society; or whether he goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in modesty to the public, as who should say: "I could speak an if I would, but I forbear." Be his raison d'être what it may, we all love him. To the nervous novice he is a kind of quiet support, to the old stager he is as a picture unto the eye and as music unto the ear.

---

Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does my memory serve me? Am I dreaming, or worse still, am I on the point of inventing? No, I could not invent such a story, it is beyond my power.

I was once lecturing to the students of a religious college in America. Before I began, a professor stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in which he asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points.

Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attaching to such a statement, and in justice to myself I can do no less than give the reader the petition just as it fell on my astonished ears:

"Lord, Thou knowest that we work hard for Thee, and that recreation is necessary in order that we may work with renewed vigor. We have to-night with us a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a compliment too flattering], whose criticisms are witty and refined, but subtle, and we pray Thee to so prepare our minds that we may thoroughly understand and enjoy them."

"But subtle!"

I am still wondering whether my lectures are so subtle as to need praying over, or whether that audience was so dull that they needed praying for.

Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the audience proved warm, keen, and thoroughly appreciative.

I Am Asked To Express Myself Freely On America

Boston, January 25. It amuses me to notice how the Americans to whom I have the pleasure of being introduced, refrain from asking me what I think of America. But they invariably inquire if the impressions of my first visit are confirmed.

This afternoon, at an "At Home," I met a lady from New York, who asked me a most extraordinary question.

"I have read 'Jonathan and His Continent,'" she said to me. "I suppose that is a book of impressions written for publication. But now, tell me en confidence, what do you think of us?"

"Is there anything in that book," I replied, "which can make you suppose that it is not the faithful expression of what the author thinks of America and the Americans?"

"Well," she said, "it is so complimentary, taken altogether, that I must confess I had a lurking suspicion of your having purposely flattered us and indulged our national weakness for hearing ourselves praised, so as to make sure of a warm reception for your book."

"No doubt," I replied, "by writing a flattering book on any country, you would greatly increase your chance of a large sale in that country; but, on the other hand, you may write an abusive book on any country and score a great success among that nation's neighbors. For my part, I have always gone my own quiet way, philosophizing rather than opinionating, and when I write, it is not with the aim of pleasing any particular public. I note down what I see, say what I think, and people may read me or not, just as they please. But I think I may boast, however, that my pen is never bitter, and I do not care to criticise unless I feel a certain amount of sympathy with the subject of my criticism. If I felt that I could only honestly say hard things of people, I would always abstain altogether."

"Now," said my fair questioner, "how is it that you have so little to say about our Fifth Avenue folks? Is it because you have seen very little of them, or is it because you could only have said hard things of them?"

"On the contrary," I replied; "I saw a good deal of them, but what I saw showed me that to describe them would be only to describe polite society, as it exists in London and elsewhere. Society gossip is not in my line; boudoir and club smoking-room scandal has no charm for me. Fifth Avenue resembles too much Mayfair and Belgravia to make criticism of it worth attempting."

I knew this answer would have the effect of putting me into the lady's good graces at once, and I was not disappointed. She accorded to me her sweetest smile, as I bowed to her to go and be introduced to another lady by the mistress of the house.

[FIFTH AVENUE FOLK.]

The next lady was a Bostonian. I had to explain to her why I had not spoken of Beacon Street people, using the same argument as in the case of Fifth Avenue society, and with the same success.

---

At the same "At Home," I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Blank, whom I had met many times in London and Paris.

She is one of the crowd of pretty and clever women whom America sends to brighten up European society, and who reappear in London and Paris with the regularity of the swallows. You meet them everywhere, and conclude that they must be married, since they are styled Mrs. and not Miss. But whether they are wives, widows, or divorcées, you rarely think of inquiring, and you may enjoy their friendship for years without knowing whether they have a living lord or not.

[A TELEPHONE AND TICKER.]

Mrs. Blank, as I say, is a most fascinating specimen of America's daughters, and to-day I find that Mr. Blank is also very much alive, but that the companions of his joys and sorrows are the telephone and the ticker; in fact it is thanks to his devotion to these that the wife of his bosom is able to adorn European society during every recurring season.

American women have such love for freedom and are so cool-headed that their visits to Europe could not arouse suspicion even in the most malicious. But, nevertheless, I am glad to have heard of Mr. Blank, because it is comfortable to have one's mind at rest on these subjects. Up to now, whenever I had been asked, as sometimes happened, though seldom: "Who is Mr. Blank, and where is he?" I had always answered: "Last puzzle out!"

---

Lunched to-day in the beautiful Algonquin Club, as the guest of Colonel Charles H. Taylor, and met the editors of the other Boston papers, among whom was John Boyle O'Reilly,[1] the lovely poet, and the delightful man. The general conversation turned on two subjects most interesting to me, viz., American journalism, and American politics. All these gentlemen seemed to agree that the American people take an interest in local politics only, but not in imperial politics, and this explains why the papers of the smaller towns give detailed accounts of what is going on in the houses of legislature of both city and State, but do not concern themselves about what is going on in Washington. I had come to that conclusion myself, seeing that the great papers of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago devoted columns to the sayings and doings of the political world in London and Paris, and seldom a paragraph to the sittings of Congress in Washington.

In the morning, before lunch, I had called on Mr. John Holmes, the editor of the Boston Herald, and there met a talented lady who writes under the nom de plume of "Max Eliot," and with whom I had a delightful half-hour's chat.

I have had to-day the pleasure of meeting the editors of all the Boston newspapers.

---

In the evening, I dined with the members of the New England Club, who meet every month to listen, at dessert, to some interesting debate or lecture. The wine is supplied by bets. You bet, for instance, that the sun will shine on the following Friday at half-past two. If you lose, you are one of those who will have to supply one, two, or three bottles of champagne at the next dinner, and so on. This evening the lecture, or rather the short address, was given by Colonel Charles H. Taylor on the history of American journalism. I was particularly interested to hear the history of the foundation of the New York Herald, by James Gordon Bennett, and that of the New York World, by Mr. Pulitzer, a Hungarian emigrant, who, some years ago, arrived in the States, unable to speak English, became jack-of-all-trades, then a reporter on a German paper, proprietor of a Western paper, and then bought the World, which is now one of the best paying concerns in the whole of the United States. This man, who, to maintain himself, not in health, but just alive, is obliged to be constantly traveling, directs the paper by telegraph from Australia, from Japan, from London, or wherever he happens to be. It is nothing short of marvelous.

---

I finished the evening in the St. Botolph Club, and I may say that I have to-day spent one of the most delightful days of my life, with those charming and highly cultured Bostonians, who, a New York witty friend of mine declares, "are educated beyond their intellects."


Footnote: [1] J. B. O'Reilly died in 1890.

St. Johnsbury

St. Johnsbury (Vt.), January 28.

ST. Johnsbury is a charming little town perched on the top of a mountain, from which a lovely scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed. The whole country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in the evening by the electric light, the effect was very beautiful. The town has only six thousand inhabitants, eleven hundred of whom came to hear my lecture to-night. Which is the European town of six thousand inhabitants that would supply an audience of eleven hundred people to a literary causerie?

St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library of 15,000 volumes, with a reading-room beautifully fitted with desks and perfectly adapted for study. A museum, a Young Men's Christian Association, with gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms, and a lecture hall capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Who, after that, would consider himself an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is more intellectual life in it than in any French town outside of Paris and about a dozen more large cities.

---

Portsea, January 30.

I have been in the State of Maine for two days; a strange State to be in, let me tell you.

After addressing the Connecticut audience in Meriden a few days ago, I thought I had had the experience of the most frigid audience that could possibly be gathered together. Last Tuesday night, at Portsea, I was undeceived.

Half-way between St. Johnsbury and Portsea, the day before yesterday, I was told that the train would be very late, and would not arrive at Portsea before half-past eight. My lecture in that city was to begin at eight. The only thing to do was to send a telegram to the manager of the lecture. At the next station I sent the following:

"Train late. If possible, keep audience waiting half an hour. Will dress on board."

I dressed in the state-room of the parlor-car. At forty minutes past eight the train arrived at Portsea. I immediately jumped into a cab and drove to the City Hall, where the lecture was to take place. The building was lighted, but, as I ascended the stairs, there was not a person to be seen or a sound to be heard. "The place is deserted," I thought; "and if anybody came to hear me, they have all gone."

I opened the door of the private room behind the platform and there found the manager, who expressed his delight to see me. I excused myself, and was going to enter into a detailed explanation when he interrupted:

[I TIP-TOED OUT.]

"Oh, that's all right."

"What do you mean?" said I. "Have you got an audience there, on the other side of that door?"

"Why, we have got fifteen hundred people."

"There?" said I, pointing to the door.

"Yes, on the other side of that door."

"But I can't hear a sound."

"I guess you can't. But that's all right; they are there."

"I suppose," I said, "I had better apologize to them for keeping them waiting three-quarters of an hour."

"Well, just as you please," said the manager. "I wouldn't."

"Wouldn't you?"

"No; I guess they would have waited another half-hour without showing any sign of impatience."

I opened the door trembling. My desk was far, far away. My manager was right; the audience was there. I stepped on the platform, shut the door after me, making as little noise as I could, and, walking on tiptoe so as to wake up as few people as possible, proceeded toward the table. Not one person applauded. A few people looked up unconcernedly, as if to say, "I guess that's the show." The rest seemed asleep, although their eyes were open.

Arrived at the desk, I faced the audience, and ventured a little joke, which fell dead flat.

I began to realize the treat that was in store for me that night.

I tried another little joke, and--missed fire.

"Never mind, old fellow," I said to myself; "it's two hundred and fifty dollars; go ahead."

And I went on.

I saw a few people smile, but not one laughed, although I noticed that a good many were holding their handkerchiefs over their mouths, probably to stifle any attempt at such a frivolous thing as laughter. The eyes of the audience, which I always watch, showed signs of interest, and nobody left the hall until the conclusion of the lecture. When I had finished, I made a small bow, when certainly fifty people applauded. I imagined they were glad it was all over.

"Well," I said to the manager, when I had returned to the little back room, "I suppose we must call this a failure."

"A failure!" said he; "it's nothing of the sort. Why, I have never seen them so enthusiastic in my life!"

I went to the hotel, and tried to forget the audience I had just had by recalling to my mind a joyous evening in Scotland. This happened about a year ago, in a mining town in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where I had been invited to lecture, on a Saturday night, to the members of a popular--very popular--Institute.

[I AM ESCORTED TO THE HALL.]

I arrived at the station from Glasgow at half-past seven, and there found the secretary and the treasurer of the Institute, who had been kind enough to come and meet me. We shook hands. They gave me a few words of welcome. I thought my friends looked a little bit queer. They proposed that we should walk to the lecture hall. The secretary took my right arm, the treasurer took my left, and, abreast, the three of us proceeded toward the hall. They did not take me to that place; I took them, holding them fast all the way--the treasurer especially.

We arrived in good time, although we stopped once for light refreshment. At eight punctually, I entered the hall, preceded by the president, and followed by the members of the committee. The president introduced me in a most queer, incoherent speech. I rose, and was vociferously cheered. When silence was restored, I said in a calm, almost solemn manner: "Ladies and Gentlemen." This was the signal for more cheering and whistling. In France whistling means hissing, and I began to feel uneasy, but soon I bore in mind that whistling, in the North of Great Britain, was used to express the highest pitch of enthusiasm.

So I went on.

The audience laughed at everything I said, and even before I said it. I had never addressed such keen people. They seemed so anxious to laugh and cheer in the right place that they laughed and cheered all the time--so much so that in an hour and twenty minutes, I had only got through half my lecture, which I had to bring to a speedy conclusion.

The president rose and proposed a vote of thanks in another most queer speech, which was a new occasion for cheering.

When we had retired in the committee room, I said to the secretary: "What's the matter with the president? Is he quite right?" I added, touching my forehead.

"Oh!" said the secretary, striking his chest as proudly as possible, "he is drunk--and so am I."

["HE'S DRUNK, AND SO AM I."]

The explanation of the whole strange evening dawned upon me. Of course they were drunk, and so was the audience.

That night, I believe I was the only sober person on the premises.

---

Yesterday, I had an interesting chat with a native of the State of Maine on the subject of my lecture at Portsea.

"You are perfectly wrong," he said to me, "in supposing that your lecture was not appreciated. I was present, and I can assure you that the attentive silence in which they listened to you from beginning to end is the proof that they appreciated you. You would also be wrong in supposing that they do not appreciate humor. On the contrary, they are very keen of it, and I believe that the old New Englander was the father of American humor, through the solemn manner in which he told comic things, and the comic manner in which he told the most serious ones. Yes, they are keen of humor, and their apparent want of appreciation is only due to reserve, to self-control."

And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the following anecdote which, I have no doubt, a good many Americans have heard before:

Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience without raising a single laugh in his listeners, when, at the close, he was thanked by a gentleman who came to him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely every one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lecturer expressed his surprise at this announcement, as the audience had not laughed, the gentleman added:

"Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if you had gone on five minutes more, upon my word I don't think we could have held out any longer."

Such is New England self-control.

Montreal

Montreal, February 2.

Montreal is a large and well-built city, containing many buildings of importance, mostly churches, of which about thirty are Roman Catholic, and over sixty are devoted to Protestant worship, in all its branches and variations, from the Anglican church to the Salvation Army.

I arrived at a station situated on a level with the St. Lawrence River. From it, we mounted in an omnibus up, up, up, through narrow streets full of shops with Breton or Norman names over them, as in Quebec; on through broader ones, where the shops grew larger and the names became more frequently English; on, on, till I thought Montreal had no end, and, at last alighted on a great square, and found myself at the door of the Windsor Hotel, an enormous and fine construction, which has proved the most comfortable, and, in every respect the best hotel I have yet stopped at on the great American continent. It is about a quarter of a mile from my bedroom to the dining-hall, which could, I believe, accommodate nearly a thousand guests.

My first visit was to an afternoon "At Home," given by the St. George's Club, who have a club-house high up on Mount Royal. It was a ladies' day, and there was music, dancing, etc. We went in a sleigh up the very steep hill, much to my astonishment. I should have thought the thing practically impossible. On our way we passed a toboggan slide down the side of Mount Royal. It took my breath away to think of coming down it at the rate of over a mile a minute. The view from the club-house was splendid, taking in a great sweep of snow-covered country, the city and the frozen St. Lawrence. There are daily races on the river, and last year they ran tram-cars on it.

[THE OLD GENTLEMAN AND THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE.]

It was odd to hear the phrase, "after the flood." When I came to inquire into it, I learned that when the St. Lawrence ice breaks up, the lower city is flooded, and this is yearly spoken of as "the flood."

I drove back from the club with my manager and two English gentlemen, who are here on a visit. As we passed the toboggan slide, my manager told me of an old gentleman over sixty, who delights in those breathless passages down the side of Mount Royal. One may see him out there "at it," as early as ten in the morning. Plenty of people, however, try one ride and never ask for another. One gentleman my manager told me of, after having tried it, expressed pretty well the feelings of many others. He said, "I wouldn't do it again for two thousand dollars, but I wouldn't have missed it for three." I asked one of the two Englishmen who accompanied us, whether he had had a try. He was a quiet, solemn, middle-aged Englishman. "Well," he said, "yes, I have. It had to be done, and I did it."

[A SNOWSHOER.]

Last night I was most interested in watching the members of the Snowshoe Club start from the Windsor, on a kind of a picnic over the country. Their costumes were very picturesque; a short tunic of woolen material fastened round the waist by a belt, a sort of woolen nightcap, with tassel falling on the shoulder, thick woolen stockings, and knickerbockers.

In Russia and the northern parts of the United States, the people say: "It's too cold to go out." In Canada, they say: "It's very cold, let's all go out." Only rain keeps them indoors. In the coldest weather, with a temperature of many degrees below zero, you have great difficulty in finding a closed carriage. All, or nearly all, are open sleighs. The driver wraps you up in furs, and as you go, gliding on the snow, your face is whipped by the cold air, you feel glowing all over with warmth, and altogether the sensation is delightful.

This morning, Joseph Howarth, the talented American actor, breakfasted with me and a few friends. Last night, I went to see him play in Steele Mackaye's "Paul Kauvar." Canada has no actors worth mentioning, and the people here depend on American artists for all their entertainments. It is wonderful how the feeling of independence engenders and develops the activity of the mind in a country. Art and literature want a home of their own, and do not flourish in other people's houses. Canada has produced nothing in literature: the only two poets she can boast are French, Louis Fréchette and Octave Crémazie. It is not because Canada has no time for brain productions. America is just as busy as she is, felling forests and reclaiming the land; but free America, only a hundred years old as a nation, possesses already a list of historians, novelists, poets, and essayists, that would do honor to any nation in the world.

---

February 4.

I had capital houses in the Queen's Hall last night and to-night.

The Canadian audiences are more demonstrative than the American ones, and certainly quite as keen and appreciative. When you arrive on the platform they are glad to see you, and they let you know it; a fact which in America, in New England especially, you have to find out for yourself.

Montreal possesses a very wealthy and fashionable community, and what strikes me most, coming as I do from the United States, is the stylish simplicity of the women. I am told that Canadian women in their tastes and ways have always been far more English than American, and that the fashions have grown more and more simple since Princess Louise gave the example of always dressing quietly when occupying Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

---

Ottawa, February 5.

One of the finest sights I have yet seen in this country was from the bridge on my way from the station to the Russell this morning. On the right the waterfalls, on the left, on the top of a high and almost perpendicular rock, the Houses of Parliament, a grand pile of buildings in gray stone, standing out clear against a cloudless, intense blue sky. The Russell is one of those huge babylonian hotels so common on the American continent, where unfortunately the cookery is not on a level with the architectural pretensions; but most of the leading Canadian politicians are boarding here while Parliament is sitting, and I am interested to see them.

After visiting the beautiful library and other parts of the government buildings, I had the good luck to hear, in the House of Representatives, a debate between Mr. Chapleau, a minister and one of the leaders of the Conservatives now in office, and Mr. Laurier, one of the chiefs of the Opposition. Both gentlemen are French. It was a fight between a tribune and a scholar; between a short, thickset, long-maned lion, and a tall, slender, delicate fox.

["THE RADIANT, LOVELY CANADIENNE."]

After lunch, I went to Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor-General, Lord Stanley of Preston. The executive mansion stands in a pretty park well wooded with firs, a mile out of the town. His Excellency was out, but his aid-de-camp, to whom I had a letter of introduction, most kindly showed me over the place. Nothing can be more simple and unpretentious than the interior of Rideau Hall. It is furnished like any comfortable little provincial hotel patronized by the gentry of the neighborhood. The panels of the drawing-room were painted by Princess Louise, when she occupied the house with the Marquis of Lorne some eight or ten years ago. This is the only touch of luxury about the place. In the time of Lord Dufferin, a ball-room and a tennis court were added to the building, and these are among the many souvenirs of his popular rule. As a diplomatist, as a viceroy, and as an ambassador, history will one day record that this noble son of Erin never made a mistake.

In the evening, I lectured in the Opera House to a large audience.

---

Kingston, February 6.

This morning, at the Russell, I was called at the telephone. It was His Excellency, who was asking me to lunch at Rideau Hall. I felt sorry to be obliged to leave Ottawa, and thus forego so tempting an invitation.

Kingston is a pretty little town on the border of Lake Ontario, possessing a university, a penitentiary, and a lunatic asylum, in neither of which I made my appearance to-night. But as soon as I had started speaking on the platform of the Town Hall, I began to think the doors of the lunatic asylum had been carelessly left open that night, for close under the window behind the platform, there began a noise which was like Bedlam let loose. Bedlam with trumpets and other instruments of torture. It was impossible to go on with the lecture, so I stopped. On inquiry, the unearthly din was found to proceed from a detachment of the Salvation Army outside the building. After some parleying, they consented to move on and storm some other citadel.

But it was a stormy evening, and peace was not yet.

[A SALVATIONIST.]

As soon as I had fairly restarted, a person in the audience began to show signs of disapproval, and twice or thrice he gave vent to his disapproval rather loudly.

I was not surprised to learn, at the close of the evening, that this individual had come in with a free pass. He had been admitted on the strength of his being announced to give a "show" of some sort himself a week later in the hall.

If a man is inattentive or creates a disturbance at any performance, you may take it for granted that his ticket was given to him. He never paid for it.

To-morrow I go to Toronto, where I am to give two lectures. I had not time to see that city properly on my last visit to Canada, and all my friends prophesy that I shall have a good time.

So does the advance booking, I understand.

West Canada

In the train from Canada to Chicago, February 15.

Lectured in Bowmanville, Ont., on the 12th, in Brantford on the 13th, and in Sarnia on the 14th, and am now on my way to Chicago, to go from there to Wisconsin and Minnesota.

From Brantford I drove to the Indian Reservation, a few miles from the town. This visit explained to me why the English are so successful with their colonies: they have inborn in them the instinct of diplomacy and government.

Whereas the Americans often swindle, starve, and shoot the Indians, the English keep them in comfort. England makes paupers and lazy drunkards of them, and they quietly and gradually disappear. She supplies them with bread, food, Bibles, and fire-water, and they become so lazy that they will not even take the trouble to sow the land of their reservations. Having a dinner supplied to them, they give up hunting, riding, and all their native sports, and become enervated. They go to school and die of attacks of civilization. England gives them money to celebrate their national fêtes and rejoicings, and the good Indians shout at the top of their voices, God save the Queen! that is--God save our pensions!

[THE BRITISH INDIAN.]

England, or Great Britain, or again, if you prefer, Greater Britain, goes further than that. In Brantford, in the middle of a large square, you can see the statue of the Indian chief Brant, erected to his memory by public subscriptions collected among the British Canadians.

Here lies the secret of John Bull's success as a colonizer. To erect a statue to an Indian chief is a stroke of genius.

---

What has struck me as most American in Canada is, perhaps, journalism.

Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec possess excellent newspapers, and every little town can boast one or two journals.

The tone of these papers is thoroughly American in its liveliness--I had almost said, in its loudness. All are readable and most cleverly edited. Each paragraph is preceded by a neat and attractive heading. As in the American papers, the editorials, or leading articles, are of secondary importance. The main portion of the publication is devoted to news, interviews, stories, gossip, jokes, anecdotes, etc.

The Montreal papers are read by everybody in the Province of Quebec, and the Toronto papers in the Province of Ontario, so that the newspapers published in small towns are content with giving all the news of the locality. Each of these has a "society" column. Nothing is more amusing than to read of the society doings in these little towns. "Miss Brown is visiting Miss Smith." "Miss Smith had tea with Miss Robinson yesterday." When Miss Brown, or Miss Smith, or Miss Robinson has given a party, the names of all the guests are inserted as well as what they had for dinner, or for supper, as the case may be. So I take it for granted that when anybody gives a party, a ball, a dinner, a reporter receives an invitation to describe the party in the next issue of the paper.

---

At nine o'clock this evening, I left Sarnia, on the frontier of Canada, to cross the river and pass into the United States. The train left the town, and, on arriving on the bank of the River St. Clair, was divided into two sections which were run on board the ferry-boat and made the crossing side by side. The passage across the river occupied about twenty minutes. On arriving at the other bank, at Port Huron, in the State of Michigan, the train left the boat in the same fashion as it had gone on board, the two parts were coupled together, and the journey on terra firma was smoothly resumed.

There is something fascinating about crossing a river at night, and I had promised myself some agreeable moments on board the ferry-boat, from which I should be able to see Port Huron lit up with twinkling lights. I was also curious to watch the train boarding the boat. But, alas, I had reckoned without my host. Instead of star-gazing and rêverie, there was in store for me a "bad quarter of an hour."

No sooner had the train boarded the ferry-boat than there came to the door of the parlor car a surly-looking, ill-mannered creature, who roughly bade me come to the baggage van, in the other section of the train, and open my trunks for him to inspect.

As soon as I had complied, he went down on his knees among my baggage, and it was plain to see that he meant business.

The first thing he took out was a suit of clothes, which he threw on the dirty floor of the van.

"Have these been worn?" he said.

"They have," I replied.

Then he took out a blue jacket which I used to cross the Atlantic.

["HAVE YOU WORN THIS?"]

"Have you worn this?"

"Yes, for the last two years."

"Is that all?" he said, with a low sardonic grin.

My trunk was the only one he had to examine, as I was the only passenger in the parlor car; and I saw that he meant to annoy me, which, I imagined, he could do with perfect impunity.

The best thing, in fact, the only thing to do was to take the misadventure good-humoredly.

He took out my linen and examined it in detail.

"Have these shirts all been worn?"

"Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you, an official of the government, seem to ignore the law of your own country? Don't you know that if all these articles are for my own private use, they are not dutiable, whether new or not?"

The man did not answer.

He took out more linen, which he put on the floor, and spreading open a pair of unmentionables, he asked again:

"Have you worn this? It looks quite new."

I nodded affirmatively.

He then took out a pair of socks.

"Have you worn these?"

"I don't know," I said. "Have a sniff at them."

He continued his examination, and was about to throw my evening suit on the floor. I had up to now been almost amused at the proceedings, but I felt my good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its tail. I took the man by the arm, and looking at him sternly, I said:

"Now, you put this carefully on the top of some other clothes."

He looked at me and complied.

By this time all the contents of my large trunk were spread on the floor.

He got up on his feet and said:

"Have I looked everywhere?"

"No," I said, "you haven't. Do you know how the famous Regent diamond, worn by the last kings of France on their crowns, was smuggled into French territory?"

[THE CONTENTS.]

The creature looked at me with an air of impudence.

"No, I don't," he replied.

I explained to him, and added:

"You have not looked there."

The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the quietest man, was fairly roused in me, and on the least provocation, I would have given this man a first-class hiding.

He went away, wondering whether I had insulted him or not, and left me in the van to repack my trunk as best I could, an operation which, I understand, it was his duty to perform himself.

St. Paul And Minneapolis, The Sister Cities

St. Paul, Minn., February 20.

Arrived at St. Paul the day before yesterday to pay a professional visit to the two great sister cities of the north of America.

Sister cities! Yes, they are near enough to shake hands and kiss each other, but I am afraid they avail themselves of their proximity to scratch each other's faces.

If you open Bouillet's famous Dictionary of History and Geography (edition 1880), you will find in it neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I was told yesterday that in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in Minneapolis. To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabitants each. Where is the dictionary of geography that can keep pace with such wonderful phantasmagoric growth? The two cities are separated by a distance of about nine miles, but they are every day growing up toward each other, and to-morrow they will practically have become one.

Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which exist between the different large cities of the United States, and when these rival places are close to each other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to become highly entertaining.

St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into the census names from tombstones, and it is affirmed that young men living in either one of the cities will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease its population by one. The story goes that once a preacher having announced, in a Minneapolis church, that he had taken the text of his sermon from St. Paul, the congregation walked out en masse.

New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at Boston. On the other hand, Boston hates Chicago, and vice versa. St. Louis has only contempt for Chicago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone in their prosperity. They are so far away from the east and north of America, that the feeling they inspire is only one of indifference.

"Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses," once said a Philadelphian to a New Yorker; "and it spreads over a far greater area than New York, with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied the New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much sat upon."

"You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to a New York wit; "Boston is a city of culture." "Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You spell culture with a big C, and God with a small g."

Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each other of counting their respective citizens twice over. All that is diverting in the highest degree. This feeling does not exist only between the rival cities of the New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man what he thinks of Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man what he thinks of Glasgow!

---

On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees below zero), I have not been able to see much either of St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and I am unable to please or vex either of these cities by pointing out their beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially built, with large churches, schools, banks, stores, and all the temples that modern Christians erect to Jehovah and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at St. Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among the very best hotels I have come across in America, the latter especially. When I have added that, the day before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the People's Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have had a crowded house at the Grand Opera House in Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary for me to say that I shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns, and that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollection of them.

---

Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went to see the Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Longfellow. The motor line gave me an idea of rapid transit. I returned to the West House for lunch and spent the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called.

["WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS AND LECTURES BRING IN?"]

The first who came sat down in my room and point-blank asked me my views on contagious diseases. Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the subject, he asked me to discourse on republics and the prospects of General Boulanger. In fact, anything for copy.

The second one, after asking me where I came from and where I was going, inquired whether I had exhausted the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should write on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me what yearly income my books and lectures brought in.

Another wanted to know why I had not brought my wife with me, how many children I had, how old they were, and other details as wonderfully interesting to the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a description of my appearance, and the different clothes I had on! "I will unpack this trunk," I said, "and spread all its contents on the floor. Perhaps you would be glad to have a look at my things." He smiled: "Don't trouble any more," he said; "I am very much obliged to you for your courtesy."

This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my hat is getting into trouble again. I thought that, after getting rid of my brown hat and sending it to the editor in the town where it had created such a sensation, peace was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis Journal I read the following:

The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for the sake of what follows], heightened by his négligé sack coat and vest, with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers, occasional glimpses of which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy ulster, which swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was trimmed with fur collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the table, carelessly thrown amid a pile of correspondence, was his nondescript headgear. One of those half-sombreros affected by the wild Western cowboy when on dress parade, an impossible combination of dark-blue and bottle-green.

Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft black felt hat bought of the best hatter in New York! No, nothing is sacred for those interviewers. Dark-blue and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that I wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?

---

The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of electricity. If your fingers come into contact with anything metallic, like the hot-water pipes, the chandeliers, the stopper of your washing basin, they draw a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who called here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was able to light my gas with his finger, by merely obtaining an electric spark on the top of the burner. When he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was joking.

I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, for instance.

Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do not know; but it is most bracing and healthy. I have never felt so well and hearty in my life as in these cold, dry climates.

---

I was all the more flattered to have such a large and fashionable audience at the Grand Opera House to-night, that my causerie was not given under the auspices of any society, or as one of any course of lectures.

I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall have to leave Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six o'clock for Chicago, which I shall reach at ten in the evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at eleven. Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway traveling--745 miles.

And still in "the neighborhood of Chicago!"

---

[AN ADVERTISEMENT.]

In the train to Chicago, February 21.

Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, in the midst of a forest, I have seen a huge wide board nailed on two trees, parallel to the railway line. On it was written, round a daub supposed to represent one of the loveliest English ladies: "If you would be as lovely as the beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes."

Soyez donc belle, to be used as an advertisement in the forests of Minnesota!

---

["I RETURNED THANKS."]

My lectures have never been criticised in more kind, flattering, and eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and the Minneapolis papers, which I am reading on my way to Chicago. I find newspaper reading a great source of amusement in the trains. First of all because these papers always are light reading, and also because reading is a possibility in a well lighted carriage going only at a moderate speed. Eating is comfortable, and even writing is possible en route. With the exception of a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston, Chicago, and half a dozen other important cities, railway traveling is slower in America than in England and France; but I have never found fault with the speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have always felt grateful to the driver for running slowly. And every time that the car reached the other side of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on which the train had to pass, I returned thanks.

Milwaukee

Milwaukee, February 25.

Arrived here from Detroit yesterday. Milwaukee is a city of over two hundred thousand inhabitants, a very large proportion of whom are Germans, who have come here to settle down, and wish good luck to the Vaterland, at the respectful distance of five thousand miles.

At the station I was met by Mr. John L. Mitchell, the railway king, and by a compatriot of mine, M. A. de Guerville, a young enthusiast who has made up his mind to check the German invasion of Milwaukee, and has succeeded in starting a French society, composed of the leading inhabitants of the city. On arriving, I found a heavy but delightful programme to go through during the day: a lunch to be given me by the ladies at Milwaukee College at one o'clock; a reception by the French Club at Mrs. John L. Mitchell's house at four; a dinner at six; my lecture at eight, and a reception and a supper by the Press Club at half-past ten; the rest of the evening to be spent as circumstances would allow or suggest. I was to be the guest of Mr. Mitchell at his magnificent house in town.

[A CITIZEN OF MILWAUKEE.]

"Good," I said, "let us begin."

---

Went through the whole programme. The reception by the French Club, in the beautiful Moorish-looking rooms of Mrs. John L. Mitchell's superb mansion, was a great success. I was amazed to meet so many French-speaking people, and much amused to see my young compatriot go from one group to another, to satisfy himself that all the members of the club were speaking French; for I must tell you that, among the statutes of the club, there is one that imposes a fine of ten cents on any member caught in the act of speaking English at the gatherings of the association.

The lecture was a great success. The New Plymouth Church[3] was packed, and the audience extremely warm and appreciative. The supper offered to me by the Press Club proved most enjoyable. And yet, that was not all. At one o'clock the Press Club repaired to a perfect German Brauerei, where we spent an hour in Bavaria, drinking excellent Bavarian beer while chatting, telling stories, etc.

I will omit to mention at what time we returned home, so as not to tell tales about my kind host.

In spite of the late hours we kept last night, breakfast was punctually served at eight this morning. First course, porridge. Thanks to the kind, thoroughly Scotch hospitality of Mr. John L. Mitchell and his charming family, thanks to the many friends and sympathizers I met here, I shall carry away a most pleasant recollection of this large and beautiful city. I shall leave Milwaukee with much regret. Indeed, the worst feature of a thick lecturing tour is to feel, almost every day, that you leave behind friends whom you may never see again.

I lecture at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, this evening; but Chicago is reached from here in two hours and a half, and I will go as late in the day as I can.

No more beds for me now, until I reach Albany, in three days.

---

The railway king in Wisconsin is a Scotchman. I was not surprised to hear it. The iron king in Pennsylvania is a Scotchman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The oil king of Ohio is a Scotchman, Mr. Alexander Macdonald. The silver king of California is a Scotchman, Mr. Mackay. The dry-goods-store king of New York--he is dead now--was a Scotchman, Mr. Stewart. It is just the same in Canada, just the same in Australia, and all over the English-speaking world. The Scotch are successful everywhere, and the new countries offer them fields for their industry, their perseverance, and their shrewdness. There you see them landowners, directors of companies, at the head of all the great enterprises. In the lower stations of life, thanks to their frugality and saving habits, you find them thriving everywhere. You go to the manufactory, you are told that the foremen are Scotch.

I have, perhaps, a better illustration still.

[TALES OF OLD SCOTLAND.]

If you travel in Canada, either by the Grand Trunk or the Canadian Pacific, you will meet in the last parlor car, near the stove, a man whose duty consists in seeing that, all along the line, the workmen are at their posts, digging, repairing, etc. These workmen are all day exposed to the Canadian temperature, and often have to work knee-deep in the snow. Well, you will find that the man with small, keen eyes, who is able to do his work in the railroad car, warming himself comfortably by the stove, is invariably a Scotchman. There is only one berth with a stove in the whole business; it is he who has got it. Many times I have had a chat with that Scotchman on the subject of old Scotland. Many times I have sat with him in the little smoking-room of the parlor car, listening to the history of his life, or, maybe, a few good Scotch anecdotes.

---

In the train from Chicago to Cleveland, February 26.

I arrived in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, dined, dressed, and lectured at the Music Hall under the auspices of the Drexel free Kindergarten. There was a large audience, and all passed off very well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand Pacific Hotel, changed clothes, and went on board the sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O.

---

The criticisms of my lecture in this morning's Chicago papers are lively.

The Herald calls me:

A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two hundred pounds in weight!

The Times says:

That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the judge, and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music Hall last night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your many little defects, peculiar to the auditors' own country, on a silver salver, so artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm in admiration of the sauce.

[A CELEBRATED EXECUTIONER.]

The Tribune is quite as complimentary and quite as lively:

His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner who could cut a man's head off, and the unlucky person not know it until a pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated head would, much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the dust.

And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I enjoyed an hour poring over the Chicago papers.

I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in "the neighborhood of Chicago."


Footnote: [3] Very strange, that church with its stalls, galleries, and boxes--a perfect theater. From the platform it was interesting to watch the immense throng, packing the place from floor to ceiling, in front, on the sides, behind, everywhere.

For The First Time I See An American Paper Abuse Me

New York, February 23.

The American press has always been very good to me. Fairness one has a right to expect, but kindness is an extra that is not always thrown in, and therefore the uniform amiability of the American press toward me could not fail to strike me most agreeably.

Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind notice or article, but in the Albany Express of yesterday morning I read:

This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture by Max O'Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was treated with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he published a book filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the traits of the American people.

This paper "has reason," as the French say. My book contained one misstatement, at all events, and that was that "all Americans have a great sense of humor." You may say that the French are a witty people, but that does not mean that France contains no fools. It is rather painful to have to explain such things, but I do so for the benefit of that editor and with apologies to the general reader.

In spite of this diverting little "par," I had an immense audience last night in Harmanus Bleecker Hall, a new and magnificent construction in Albany, excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted for lecturing in, on account of its long and narrow shape.

[RIP VAN WINKLE.]

I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which struck me as being a remarkably beautiful place, but having to lecture in New York this afternoon, I took the vestibule train early this morning for New York. This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the Hudson River, traveling as you do between two ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with beautiful habitations, and now and then passing a little town bathing its feet in the water. In the distance one gets good views of the Catskill Mountains, immortalized by Washington Irving in "Rip Van Winkle."

On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to read the news of yesterday. Imagine my amusement, on opening the Albany Express to read the following extract from the report of my lecture:

He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the only point that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of many clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of different Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently is a great admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into ridicule some of their most conspicuously objectionable traits.... His lecture was entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable.

The most amusing part of all this is that the American sketches which I introduced into my lecture last night, and which seemed to have struck the Albany Express so agreeably, were all extracts from the book "filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the traits of the American people." Well, after all, there is humor, unconscious humor, in the Albany Express.

---

Arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at noon, I gave up my check to a transfer man, but learned to my chagrin that the vestibule train from Albany had carried no baggage, and that my things would only arrive by the next train at about three o'clock. Pleasant news for a man who was due to address an audience at three!

["A LITTLE BIT STIFF."]

There was only one way out of the difficulty. Off I went post-haste to a ready-made tailor's, who sold me a complete fit-out from head to foot. I did not examine the cut and fit of each garment very minutely, but went off satisfied that I was presenting a neat and respectable appearance. Before going on the stage, however, I discovered that the sleeves of the new coat, though perfectly smooth and well-behaved so long as the arms inside them were bent at the elbow, developed a remarkable cross-twist as soon as I let my arms hang straight down.

By means of holding it firm with the middle finger, I managed to keep the recalcitrant sleeve in position, and the affair passed off very well. Only my friends remarked, after the lecture, that they thought I looked a little bit stiff, especially when making my bow to the audience.

---

My lecture at Daly's Theater this afternoon was given under the auspices of the Bethlehem Day Nursery, and I am thankful to think that this most interesting association is a little richer to-day than it was yesterday. For an afternoon audience it was remarkably warm and responsive.

I have many times lectured to afternoon audiences, but have not, as a rule, enjoyed it. Afternoon "shows" are a mistake. Do not ask me why; but think of those you have ever been to, and see if you have a lively recollection of them. There is a time for everything. Fancy playing the guitar under your lady love's window by daylight, for instance!

Afternoon audiences are kid-gloved ones. There is but a sprinkling of men, and so the applause, when it comes, is a feeble affair, more chilling almost than silence. In some fashionable towns it is bad form to applaud at all in the afternoon. I have a vivid recollection of the effect produced one afternoon in Cheltenham by the vigorous applause of a sympathizing friend of mine, sitting in the reserved seats. How all the other reserved seats craned their necks in credulous astonishment to get a view of this innovator, this outer barbarian! He was new to the wondrous ways of the Chillitonians. In the same audience was a lady, Irish and very charming, as I found out on later acquaintance, who showed her appreciation from time to time by clapping the tips of her fingers together noiselessly, while her glance said: "I should very much like to applaud, but you know I can't do it; we are in Cheltenham, and such a thing is bad form, especially in the afternoon."

[THE GOUTY MAN.]

Afternoon audiences in the southern health resorts of England are probably the least inspiriting and inspiring of all. There are the sick, the lame, the halt. Some of them are very interesting people, but a large proportion appear to be suffering more from the boredom of life than any other complaint, and look as if it would do them good to follow out the well-known advice, "Live on sixpence a day, and earn it." It is hard work entertaining people who have done everything, seen everything, tasted everything, been everywhere--people whose sole aim is to kill time. A fair sprinkling are gouty. They spend most of their waking hours in a bath-chair. As a listener, the gouty man is sometimes decidedly funny. He gives signs of life from time to time by a vigorous slap on his thigh and a vicious looking kick. Before I began to know him, I used to wonder whether it was my discourse producing some effect upon him.

I am not afraid of meeting these people in America. Few people are bored here, all are happy to live, and all work and are busy. American men die of brain fever, but seldom of the gout. If an American saw that he must spend his life wheeled in a bath-chair, he would reflect that rivers are numerous in America, and he would go and take a plunge into one of them.

Visit To The Brooklyn Academy Of Music

New York, March 2.

Went to hear Dr. T. de Witt Talmage this morning at the Academy of Music, Brooklyn.

What an actor America has lost by Dr. Talmage choosing the pulpit in preference to the stage!

The Academy of Music was crowded. Standing-room only. For an old-fashioned European, to see a theater, with its boxes, stalls, galleries, open for divine service was a strange sight; but we had not gone very far into the service before it became plain to me that there was nothing divine about it. The crowd had come there, not to worship God, but to hear Mr. Talmage.

At the door the programme was distributed. It consisted of six hymns to be interluded with prayers by the doctor. Between the fifth and sixth, he delivered the lecture, or the sermon, if you insist on the name, and during the sixth there was the collection, that hinge on which the whole service turns in Protestant places of worship.

I took a seat and awaited with the rest the entrance of Dr. Talmage. There was subdued conversation going on all around, just as there would be at a theater or concert: in fact, throughout the whole of the proceedings, there was no sign of a silent lifting up of the spirit in worship. Not a person in that strange congregation, went on his or her knees to pray. Most of them put one hand in front of the face, and this was as near as they got that morning to an attitude of devotion. Except for this, and the fact that they did not applaud, there was absolutely no difference between them and any other theater audience I ever saw.

[THE LEADER OF THE CHOIR.]

The monotonous hymns were accompanied by a cornet-à-piston, which lent a certain amount of life to them, but very little religious harmony. That cornet was the key-note of the whole performance. The hymns, composed, I believe, for Dr. Talmage's flock, are not of high literary value. "General" Booth would probably hesitate to include such in the répertoire of the Salvation Army. Judge of them for yourself. Here are three illustrations culled from the programme:

Sing, O sing, ye heirs of glory!
Shout your triumphs as you go:
Zion's gates will open for you,
You shall find an entrance through.

'Tis the promise of God, full salvation to give
Unto him who on Jesus, his Son, will believe.

Though the pathway be lonely, and dangerous too, (sic)
Surely Jesus is able to carry me thro'.

This is poetry such as you find inside Christmas crackers. Another hymn began:

One more day's work for Jesus,
One less of life for me!

I could not help thinking that there would be good employment for a prophet of God, with a stout whip, in the congregations of the so-called faithful of to-day. I have heard them by hundreds shouting at the top of their voices:

O Paradise, O Paradise!
'Tis weary waiting here;
I long to be where Jesus is,
To feel, to see him near.
O Paradise, O Paradise!
I greatly long to see
The special place my dearest Lord,
In love, prepares for me!

Knowing something of those people outside the church doors, I have often thought what an edifying sight it would be if the Lord deigned to listen and take a few of them at their word. If the fearless Christ were here on earth again, what crowds of cheats and humbugs he would drive out of the Temple! And foremost, I fancy, would go the people who, instead of thanking their Maker who allows the blessed sun to shine, the birds to sing, and the flowers to grow for them here, howl and whine lies about longing for the joy of moving on to the better world, to the "special place" that is prepared for them. If there be a better world, it will be too good for hypocrites.

After hymn the fifth, Dr. Talmage takes the floor. The audience settled in their seats in evident anticipation of a good time, and it was soon clear to me that the discourse was not to be dull at any rate. But I waited in vain for a great thought, a lofty idea, or refined language. There came none. Nothing but commonplaces given out with tricks of voice and the gestures of a consummate actor. The modulations of the voice have been studied with care, no single platform trick was missing.

The doctor comes on the stage, which is about forty feet wide. He begins slowly. The flow of language is great, and he is never at a loss for a word. Motionless, in his lowest tones, he puts a question to us. Nobody replies, of course. Thereupon he paces wildly up and down the whole length of the stage. Then, bringing up in full view of his auditors, he stares at them, crosses his arms, gives a double and tremendous stamp on the boards, and in a terrific voice he repeats the question, and answers it. The desired effect is produced: he never misses fire.

Being an old stager of several years' standing myself, I admire him professionally. Nobody is edified, nobody is regenerated, nobody is improved, but all are entertained. It is not a divine service, but it is a clever performance, and the Americans never fail to patronize a clever performance. All styles go down with them. They will give a hearing to everybody but the bore, especially on Sundays, when other forms of entertainment are out of the running.

[THE DESIRED EFFECT.]

It is not only the Brooklyn public that are treated to the discourses of Dr. Talmage, but the whole of America. He syndicates his sermons, and they are published in Monday's newspapers in all quarters of America. I have also seen them reproduced in the Australian papers.

The delivery of these orations by Dr. Talmage is so superior to the matter they are made of, that to read them is slow indeed compared to hearing them.

At the back of the programme was a flaring advertisement of Dr. Talmage's paper, called:

CHRISTIAN HERALD AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES.

A live, undenominational, illustrated Christian paper, with a weekly circulation of fifty thousand copies, and rapidly increasing. Every State of the Union, every Province of Canada, and every country in the world is represented on its enormous subscription list. Address your subscription to Mr. N., treasurer, etc.

"Signs of our times," indeed!

My Ideas Of The State Of Texas

New York, March 5.

Have had cold audiences in Maine and Connecticut; and indifferent ones in several cities, while I have been warmly received in many others. It seems that, if I went to Texas, I might get it hot.

I have received to-day a Texas paper containing a short editorial marked at the four corners in blue pencil. Impossible not to see it. The editorial abuses me from the first line to the last. When there appears in a paper an article, or even only a short paragraph, abusing you, you never run the risk of not seeing it. There always is, somewhere, a kind friend who will post it to you. He thinks you may be getting a little conceited, and he forwards the article to you, that you may use it as wholesome physic. It does him good, and does you no harm.

The article in question begins by charging me with having turned America and the Americans into ridicule, goes on wondering that the Americans can receive me so well everywhere, and, after pitching into me right and left, winds up by warning me that, if I should go to Texas, I might for a change meet with a hot reception.

A shot, perhaps.

A shot in Texas! No, no, no.

I won't go to Texas. I should strongly object to being shot anywhere, but especially in Texas, where the event would attract so little public attention.

["A SHOT IN TEXAS."]

---

Yet, I should have liked to go to Texas, for was it not from that State that, after the publication of "Jonathan and His Continent," I received the two following letters, which I have kept among my treasures?

DEAR SIR:

I have read your book on America and greatly enjoyed it. Please to send me your autograph. I enclose a ten-cent piece. The postage will cost you five cents. Don't trouble about the change.

MY DEAR SIR:

I have an album containing the photographs of many well-known people from Europe as well as from America. I should much like to add yours to the number. If you will send it to me, I will send you mine and that of my wife in return.

---

And I also imagine that there must be in Texas a delightful primitiveness of manners and good-fellowship.

A friend once related to me the following reminiscence:

I arrived one evening in a little Texas town, and asked for a bedroom at the hotel.

There was no bedroom to be had, but only a bed in a double-bedded room.

"Will that suit you?" said the clerk.

"Well, I don't know," I said hesitatingly. "Who is the other?"

"Oh, that's all right," said the clerk, "you may set your mind at rest on that subject."

"Very well," I replied, "I will take that bed."

At about ten o'clock, as I was preparing to go to bed, my bedroom companion entered. It was a frontier man in full uniform: Buffalo Bill hat, leather leggings, a belt accommodating a couple of revolvers--no baggage of any kind.

I did not like it.

"Hallo, stranger," said the man, "how are you?"

"I'm pretty well," I replied, without meaning a word of it.

The frontier man undressed, that is to say, took off his boots, placed the two revolvers under his pillows and lay down.

I liked it less and less.

By and by, we both went to sleep. In the morning we woke up at the same time. He rose, dressed--that is to say, put on his boots, and wished me good-morning.

[MY ROOM-MATE.]

The hall porter came with letters for my companion, but none for me. I thought I should like to let that man know I had no money with me. So I said to him:

"I am very much disappointed. I expected some money from New York, and it has not come."

"I hope it will come," he replied.

I did not like that hope.

In the evening, we met again. He undressed--you know, went to sleep, rose early in the morning, dressed--you know.

The porter came again with letters for him and none for me.

"Well, your money has not come," he said.

"I see it has not. I'm afraid I'm going to be in a fix what to do."

"I'm going away this morning."

"Are you?" I said. "I'm sorry to part with you."

The frontier man took a little piece of paper and wrote something on it.

"Take this, my friend," he said; "it may be useful to you."

It was a check for a hundred dollars.

I could have gone down on my knees, as I refused the check and asked that man's pardon.

---

I lectured in Brooklyn to-night, and am off to the West to-morrow morning.

A Journey If You Like

In the train to Brushville, March 11.

Left Cincinnati this morning at ten o'clock and shall not arrive at Brushville before seven o'clock to-night. I am beginning to learn how to speak American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at the railroad office, the clerk said to me:

"C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?"

"C. H. D.," I replied, with perfect assurance.

I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.

By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.

No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor cars--and the dining cars.

At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all the signs of American civilization.

I changed trains at one o'clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut, on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription "Lunch Room," was pointed out to me. Lunch in America has not the meaning that it has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are solid people. In England lunch means something. In America, it does not. However, as there was no Beware written outside, I entered the place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.

["PEACH POY AND APPLE POY."]

"I want something to eat," I said to a man behind the counter, who was in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.

"What 'd ye loike?" replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.

"Well, what have you got?"

"Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince poy."

"Is that all?"

"And, shure, what more do you want?"

I have always suspected something mysterious about mince pies. At home, I eat mince pies. I also trust my friends' cooks. Outside, I pass. I think that mince pies and sausages should be made at home.

"I like a little variety," I said to the Irishman, "give me a small slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie, and another of peach pie."

The Irishman stared at me.

"What's the matter with the mince poy?" he seemed to say.

I could see from his eye that he resented the insult offered to his mince pies.

I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was told that the train was two hours behind time, and I should be too late to catch the last Brushville train at the next change.

I walked and smoked.

The three pies began to get acquainted with each other.

---

Brushville, March 12.

Oh, those pies!

At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late. The last Brushville train was gone.

The pies were there.

A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed, which now seemed more problematic than ever.

I went to the station-master.

"Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville to-night?"

"A hundred dollars."

"How much for a locomotive alone?"

"Sixty dollars."

"Have you a freight train going to Brushville?"

"What will you do with it?"

"Board it."

"Board it! I can't stop the train."

"I'll take my chance."

"Your life is insured?"

"Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth."

"Very well," he said, "I'll let you do it for five dollars."

[ON THE ROAD TO BRUSHVILLE.]

And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun. The freight train arrived, slackened speed, and I boarded, with my portmanteau and my umbrella, a car loaded with timber. I placed my handbag on the timber--you know, the one I had when traveling in "the neighborhood of Chicago"--sat on it, opened my umbrella, and waved a "tata" to the station-master.

It was raining fast, and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make at the rate of about twelve miles an hour.

Oh, those pies! They now seemed to have resolved to fight it out. Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu!

A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or rather, get down, and take a ticket for Brushville on board a local train.

Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I arrived here at ten o'clock last night. The peach pie, the apple pie, and the apricot pie had settled their differences and become on friendly and accommodating terms.

I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some light refreshments, which I only obtained, at that time of night, thanks to the manager, whom I had the pleasure of knowing personally.

At eleven o'clock I went to bed, or, to use a more proper expression for my Philadelphia readers, I retired.

I had been "retiring" for about half an hour, when I heard a knock at the door.

"Who's there?" I grumbled from under the bedclothes.

"A representative of the Brushville Express."

"Oh," said I, "I am very sorry--but I'm asleep."

"Please let me in; I won't detain you very long."

"I guess you won't. Now, please do not insist. I am tired, upset, ill, and I want rest. Come to-morrow morning."

"No, I can't do that," answered the voice behind the door; "my paper appears in the morning, and I want to put in something about you."

"Now, do go away," I pleaded, "there's a good fellow."

"I must see you," insisted the voice.

"You go!" I cried, "you go----" without mentioning any place.

For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I thought the interviewer was gone. The illusion was sweet, but short. There was another knock, followed by a "I really must see you to-night." Seeing that there would be no peace until I had let the reporter in, I unbolted the door, and jumped back into my--you know.

[THE INTERVIEWER.]

It was pitch dark.

The door opened; and I heard the interviewer's steps in the room. By and by, the sound of a pocket being searched was distinct. It was his own. A match was pulled out and struck; the premises examined and reconnoitered.

A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of the room. The reporter, speechless and solemn, lighted one burner, then two, then three, chose the most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it, looking at me with an air of triumph.

I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my "retiring" clothes.

"Que voulez-vous?" I wanted to yell, my state of drowsiness allowing me to think only in French.

Instead of translating this query by "What do you want?" as I should have done, if I had been in the complete enjoyment of my intellectual faculties, I shouted to him:

"What will you have?"

"Oh, thanks, I'm not particular," he calmly replied. "I'll have a little whisky and soda--rye whisky, please."

My face must have been a study as I rang for whisky and soda.

The mixture was brought--for two.

"I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?" coolly said the man in the room.

"Not at all," I remarked; "this is perfectly lovely; I enjoy it all."

He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed his legs, and having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, he said:

"I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville; may I ask you what you have come here for?"

"Now," said I, "what the deuce is that to you? If this is the kind of questions you have to ask me, you go----"

He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:

"How are you struck with Brushville?"

"I am struck," said I, "with the cheek of some of the inhabitants. I have driven to this hotel from the depot in a closed carriage, and I have seen nothing of your city."

The man wrote down something.

"I lecture to-morrow night," I continued, "before the students of the State University, and I have come here for rest."

He took this down.

"All this, you see, is very uninteresting; so, good-night."

And I disappeared.

The interviewer rose and came to my side.

"Really, now that I am here, you may as well let me have a chat with you."

"You wretch!" I exclaimed. "Don't you see that I am dying for sleep? Is there nothing sacred for you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have you no mother? Don't you believe in future punishment? Are you a man or a demon?"

"Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscences of the road," said the man, with a sardonic grin.

I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter resumed his seat and smoked.

"Are you gone?" I sighed, from under the blankets.

The answer came in the following words:

"I understand, sir, that when you were a young man----"

"When I was WHAT?" I shouted, sitting up once more.

"I understand, sir, that when you were quite a young man," repeated the interviewer, with the sentence improved, "you were an officer in the French army."

"I was," I murmured, in the same position.

"I also understand you fought during the Franco-Prussian war."

"I did," I said, resuming a horizontal position.

"May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of the Franco-Prussian war--just enough to fill about a column?"

I rose and again sat up.

"Free citizen of the great American Republic," said I, "beware, beware! There will be blood shed in this room to-night."

And I seized my pillow.

"You are not meaty," exclaimed the reporter.

"May I inquire what the meaning of this strange expression is?" I said, frowning; "I don't speak American fluently."

"It means," he replied, "that there is very little to be got out of you."

"Are you going?" I said, smiling.

"Well, I guess I am."

"Good-night."

"Good-night."

I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and "re-retired."

"Poor fellow," I thought; "perhaps he relied on me to supply him with material for a column. I might have chatted with him. After all, these reporters have invariably been kind to me. I might as well have obliged him. What is he going to do?"

And I dreamed that he was dismissed.

I ought to have known better.

This morning I opened the Brushville Express, and, to my stupefaction, saw a column about me. My impressions of Brushville, that I had no opportunity of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush to record here the exploits I performed during the Franco-Prussian war, as related by my interviewer, especially those which took place at the battle of Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present. The whole thing was well written. The reference to my military services began thus: "Last night a hero of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under the hospitable roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city."

"Slept!" This was adding insult to injury.

---

This morning I had the visit of two more reporters.

"What do you think of Brushville?" they said; and, seeing that I would not answer the question, they volunteered information on Brushville, and talked loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the afternoon papers will publish my impressions of Brushville.

Chicago (Second Visit)

Chicago, March 15.

Arrived here this morning and put up at the Grand Pacific Hotel. My lecture to-night at the Central Music Hall is advertised as a causerie. My local manager informs me that many people have inquired at the box-office what the meaning of that French word is. As he does not know himself, he could not enlighten them, but he thinks that curiosity will draw a good crowd to-night.

This puts me in mind of a little incident which took place about a year ago. I was to make my appearance before an afternoon audience in the fashionable town of Eastbourne. Not wishing to convey the idea of a serious and prosy discourse, I advised my manager to call the entertainment "A causerie." The room was full and the affair passed off very well. But an old lady, who was a well-known patroness of such entertainments, did not put in an appearance. On being asked the next day why she was not present, she replied: "Well, to tell you the truth, when I saw that they had given the entertainment a French name, I was afraid it might be something not quite fit for me to hear." Dear soul!

---

March 16.

My manager's predictions were realized last night. I had a large audience, one of the keenest and the most responsive and appreciative I have ever had. I was introduced by Judge Elliott Anthony, of the Superior Court, in a short, witty, and graceful little speech. He spoke of Lafayette and of the debt of gratitude America owes to France for the help she received at her hands during the War of Independence. Before taking leave of me, Judge Anthony kindly invited me to pay a visit to the Superior Court next Wednesday.

---

March 17.

Dined yesterday with Mr. James W. Scott, proprietor of the Chicago Herald, one of the most flourishing newspapers in the United States, and in the evening went to see Richard Mansfield in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The play is a repulsive one, but the double impersonation gives the great actor a magnificent opportunity for the display of his histrionic powers. The house was crowded, though it was Sunday. The pick of Chicago society was not there, of course. Some years ago, I was told, a Sunday audience was mainly composed of men. To-day the women go as freely as the men. The "horrible" always has a great fascination for the masses, and Mansfield held his popular audience in a state of breathless suspense. There was a great deal of disappointment written on the faces when the light was turned down on the appearance of "Mr. Hyde," with his horribly distorted features. A woman, sitting in a box next to the one I occupied, exclaimed, as "Hyde" came to explain his terrible secret to the doctor, in the fourth act, "What a shame, they are turning down the light again!"

---

["DEAR SOUL!"]

March 18.

Spent yesterday in recreation intellectual--and otherwise. I like to see everything, and I have no objection to entering a dime museum. I went to one yesterday morning, and saw a bearded lady, a calf with two heads, a gorilla (stuffed), a girl with no arms, and other freaks of nature. The bearded lady had very, very masculine features, but honi soit qui mal y pense. I could not help thinking of one of General Horace Porter's good stories. A school-master asks a little boy what his father is.

"Please, sir, papa told me not to tell."

"Oh, never mind, it's all right with me."

"Please, sir, he is the bearded lady at the dime museum."

From the museum I went to the free library in the City Hall. Dime museums and free libraries--such is America. The attendance at the free libraries increases rapidly every day, and the till at the dime museums diminishes with proportionate rapidity.

["THE BEARDED LADY."]

After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili Vereschagin's pictures. What on earth could possess the talented Russian artist, whose coloring is so lovely, to expend his labor on such subjects! Pictures like those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all their hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creating a detestation of war in all who see them. Nothing short of such a motive in the artist could excuse the portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so many nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes and brain for days and nights to come. Battle scenes portrayed with a realism that is revolting, because, alas, only too true. The execution of nihilists in a dim, dreary, snow-covered waste. An execution of sepoys, the doomed rebels tied to the mouths of cannon about to be fired off. Scenes of torture, illustrative of the extent to which human suffering can be carried, give you cold shudders in every fiber of your body. One horrid canvas shows a deserted battlefield, the snow-covered ground littered with corpses that ravens are tearing and fighting for. But, perhaps worst of all, is a picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have been surprised and slain by Turks. Among the bodies, outraged by horrible and nameless mutilations, walks a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putrefaction. This collection of pictures is installed in a place which has been used for stabling horses in, and is reeking with stable odors and the carbolic acid that has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of smell is in full sympathy with your horrified sense of sight: both are revolted.

---

Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the Russian artist's works was a small one, in which hung a single picture. You little guess that that picture was no other than Jean Francois Millet's "Angelus." Millet's dear little "Angelus," that hymn of resignation and peace, alongside of all this roar and carnage of battle! The exhibitor thought, perhaps, that a sedative might be needed after the strong dose of Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who went into that little room after the others was in a mood to listen to Millet's message.

---

March 19.

Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond Libby Prison, a four-story, huge brick building which has been removed here from Richmond, over a distance of more than a thousand miles, across the mountains of Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the circular says, an unparalleled feat in the history of the world. The prison has been converted into a museum, illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in America. The visit proved very interesting. In the afternoon I had a drive through the beautiful parks of the city.

In the evening I went to see "Tannhäuser" at the Auditorium. Outside, the building looks more like a penitentiary than a place of amusement--a huge pile of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks of stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do not know anything to compare with it for comfort, grandeur, and beauty. It can hold seven thousand people. The decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done by means of arc electric lights in the enormously lofty roof--lights which can be lowered at will. Mr. Peck kindly took me to see the inner workings of the stage. I should say "stages," for there are three. The hydraulic machinery for raising and lowering them cost $200,000.

Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that she is the finest lady exponent of Wagner's music alive. She not only sings the parts, but looks them. Built on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond hair, she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of clear tones, a Norse goddess strayed into the nineteenth century.

M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding prodigy, an aberration of genius, a dreamer haunted by the colossal. For years I had listened to Wagner's music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up on the tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Auber, etc., I entirely failed to appreciate the music of the future. All I could say in its favor was some variation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr. Edgar W. Nye ("Bill Nye") who, after giving the subject his mature consideration, said he came to the conclusion that Wagner's music was not so bad as it sounded. But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and heard and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to see that they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.

Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization of speech.

The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into, was that of listening to the voices instead of listening to the orchestra. The fact is, the voices could almost be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra gives you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on the stage are really little more than illustrative puppets. They play about the same part in the work that pictures play in a book. Wagner's method was something so new, so different to all we had been accustomed to, that it naturally provoked much indignation and enmity--not because it was bad, but because it was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and Romanticists over again.

If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of the pangs and miseries of a sufferer from toothache, you would, if you were a disciple of Wagner, write your orchestral score so that the instruments should convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans--the temporary relief, the return of the pain, the sudden disappearance of it on ringing the bell at the dentist's door, the final wrench of extraction gone through by the poor patient. On the boards you would put a personage who, with voice and contortions, should help you, as pictorial illustrations help an author. Such is the Wagnerian method.

["A TERRIBLE WAGNERITE."]

After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most Wagnerites are terrible. They will not admit that anything can be discussed, much less criticised, in the works of the master. They are not admirers, disciples; they are worshipers. To them Wagner's music is as perfect as America is to many a good-humored American. They will tell you that never have horses neighed so realistically as they do in the "Walküre." Answer that this is almost lowering music to the level of ventriloquism, and they will declare you a profane, unworthy to live. My Wagnerite friend told me last night that Wagner's work constantly improved till it reached perfection in "Parsifal." "There," he said, quite seriously, "the music has reached such a state of perfection that, in the garden scene, you can smell the violets and the roses."

"Well," I interrupted, "I heard 'Parsifal' in Bayreuth, and I must confess that it is, perhaps, the only work of Wagner's that I cannot understand."

"I have heard it thirty-four times," he said, "and enjoyed it more the thirty-fourth time than I did the thirty-third."

"Then," I remarked, "perhaps it has to be heard fifty times before it can be thoroughly appreciated. In which case, you must own that life is too short to enable one to see an opera fifty times in order to enjoy it as it should really be enjoyed. I don't care what science there is about music, or what labors a musician should have to go through. As one of the public, I say that music is a recreation, and should be understood at once. Auber, for example, with his delightful airs, that three generations of men have sung on their way home from the opera house, has been a greater benefactor of the human race than Wagner. I prefer music written for the heart to music written for the mind."

On hearing me mention Auber's name in one breath with Wagner's, the Wagnerite threw a glance of contempt at me that I shall never forget.

"Well," said I, to regain his good graces, "I may improve yet--I will try again."

As a rule, the Wagnerite is a man utterly destitute of humor.

---

March 20.

Yesterday morning I called on Judge Elliott Anthony, at the Superior Court. The Judge invited me to sit by his side on the tribunal, and kindly explained to me the procedure, as the cases went on. Certainly kindness is not rare in Europe, but such simplicity in a high official is only to be met with in America.

Mr. And Mrs. Kendal In New York

New York, March 28.

The New York papers this morning announce that the "Society of Young Girls of Pure Character on the Stage" give a lunch to Mrs. Kendal to-morrow.

Mr. and Mrs. Kendal have conquered America. Their tour is a triumphal march through the United States, a huge success artistically, financially, and socially.

I am not surprised at it. I went to see them a few days ago in "The Ironmaster," and they delighted me. As Claire Mrs. Kendal was admirable. She almost succeeded in making me forget Madame Jane Hading, who created the part at the Gymnase, in Paris, six years ago.

---

This morning Mr. Joseph Jefferson called on me at the Everett House. The veteran actor, who looks more like a man of fifty than like one of over sixty, is now playing with Mr. William J. Florence in "The Rivals." I had never seen him off the stage. I immediately saw that the characteristics of the actor were the characteristics of the man--kindness, naturalness, simplicity, bonhomie, and finesse. An admirable actor, a great artist, and a lovable man.

At the Down-Town Club, I lunched with the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne--the greatest novelist that America has yet produced--Mr. Julian Hawthorne, himself a novelist of repute. Lately he has written a series of sensational novels in collaboration with the famous New York detective, Inspector Byrnes. Mr. Julian Hawthorne is a man of about forty-five, tall, well-proportioned, with an artistic-looking head crowned with grayish hair, that reminds a Frenchman of Alexandre Dumas, fils, and an American of Nathaniel Hawthorne. A charming, unaffected man, and a delightful causeur.

---

In the evening I went to Daly's Theater and saw "As You Like It." That bewitching queen of actresses, Miss Ada Rehan, played Rosalind. Miss Rehan is so original that it would be perfectly impossible to compare her to any of the other great actresses of France and England. She is like nobody else. She is herself. The coaxing drawl of her musical voice, the vivacity of her movements, the whimsical spontaneity that seems to direct her acting, her tall, handsome figure, her beautiful, intellectual face, all tend to make her a unique actress. She fascinates you, and so gets hold of you, that when she is on the stage she entirely fills it. Mr. John Drew as Orlando and Mr. James Drew as Touchstone were admirable.

It matters little what the play-bill announces at Daly's Theater. If I have not seen the play, I am sure to enjoy it; if I have seen it already, I am sure to enjoy it again.

Easter Sunday In New York

New York, April 6 (Easter Sunday.)

[A BELLOWING SOPRANO.]

This morning I went to Dr. Newton's church in Forty-eighth Street. He has the reputation of being one of the best preachers in New York, and the choir enjoys an equally great reputation. The church was literally packed until the sermon began, and then some of the strollers who had come to hear the anthems moved on. Dr. Newton's voice and delivery were not at all to my taste, so I did not sit out his sermon either. He has a big, unctuous voice, with the intonations and inflections of a showman at the fair. He has not the flow of ideas that struck me so forcibly when I heard the late Henry Ward Beecher in London; he has not the histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was more show than beauty about the music, too. A bellowing, shrieking soprano overpowered all the other voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful tenor that deserved to be heard.

---

New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day. Every woman has a new bonnet and walks abroad to show it.

[SOME EASTER BONNETS.]

There are grades in millinery as there are in society. The imported bonnet takes the proudest rank; it is the aristocrat in the world of headgear. It does not always come with the conqueror (in one of her numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and a proud, though ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched on the dainty head of a New York belle, and supplemented by a frock from Felix's or Redfern's.

It is a unique sight, Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, when all the up-town churches have emptied themselves of their gayly garbed worshipers.

[KEEPING LENT.]

The "four hundred" have been keeping Lent in polite, if not rigorous, fashion. Who shall say what it has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit themselves to the sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration during six whole weeks? These things cannot be lightly judged by the profane. I have even heard of sweet, devout New York girls who limited themselves to one pound of marrons glacés a week during Lent. Such feminine heroism deserves mention.

[A CLUB WINDOW.]

And have they not been sewing flannel for the poor, once a week, instead of directing the manipulation of silk and gauze for their own fair forms, all the week long? Who shall gauge the self-control necessary for fasting such as this? But now Dorcas meetings are over, and dances begin again to-morrow. The Easter anthem has been sung, and the imported bonnet takes a turn on Fifth Avenue to salute and to hob-nob with Broadway imitations during the hour between church and lunch. To New Yorkers this Easter Church parade is as much of an institution in its way as those of Hyde Park during the season are to the Londoners. It was plain that the people sauntering leisurely on the broad sidewalks, the feminine portion at least, had not come out solely for religious exercise in church, but had every intention to see and to be seen, especially the latter. On my way down, I saw some folks who had not been to church, and only wanted to see, so stood with faces glued to the windows of the big clubs, looking out at the kaleidoscopic procession: old bachelors, I daresay, who hold the opinion that spring bonnets, whether imported or home-grown, ought to be labeled "dangerous." At all events they were gazing as one might gaze at some coveted but out-of-reach fruit, and looking as if they dared not face their fascinating young townswomen in all the splendor of their new war paint. A few, perhaps, were married men, and this was their quiet protest against fifty-dollar hats and five-hundred-dollar gowns.

The sight was beautiful and one not to be forgotten.

---

In the evening I dined with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll and the members of his family. I noticed something which struck me as novel, but as perfectly charming. Each man was placed at table by the side of his wife, including the host and hostess. This custom in the colonel's family circle (I was the only guest not belonging to it) is another proof that his theories are put into practice in his house. Dinner and time vanished with rapidity in that house, where everything breathes love and happiness.

The Origin Of American Humor And Its Characteristics

Madison, Wis., April 22.

Have been lecturing during the past fortnight in about twelve places, few of which possessed any interest whatever. One of them, however--Cincinnati--I was glad to see again.

This town of Madison is the only one that has really struck me as being beautiful. From the hills the scenery is perfectly lovely, with its wooded slopes and lakes. Through the kindness of Governor Hoard, I have had a comprehensive survey of the neighborhood; for he has driven me in his carriage to all the prettiest spots, delighting me all the while with his conversation. He is one of those Americans whom you may often meet if you have a little luck: witty, humorous, hospitable, kind-hearted, the very personification of unaffected good-fellowship.

The conversation turned on humor.

I have always wondered what the origin of American humor can be; where is or was the fountain-head. You certainly find humor in England among the cultured classes, but the class of English people who emigrate cannot have imported much humor into America. Surely Germany and Scandinavia cannot have contributed to the fund, either. The Scotch have dry, quiet, pawky, unconscious humor; but their influence can hardly have been great enough to implant their quaint native "wut" in American soil. Again, the Irish bull is droll, but scarcely humorous. The Italians, the Hungarians, have never yet, that I am aware of, been suspected of even latent humor.

What then, can be the origin of American humor, as we know it, with its naïve philosophy, its mixture of the sacred and the profane, its exaggeration and that preposterousness which so completely staggers the foreigner, the French and the German especially?

The mixing of sacred with profane matter, no doubt, originated with the Puritans themselves, and is only an outcome of the cheek-by-jowl, next-door-neighbor fashion of addressing the Higher Powers, which is so common in the Scotch. Many of us have heard of the Scotch minister, whom his zeal for the welfare of missionaries moved to address Heaven in the following manner: "We commend to thy care those missionaries whose lives are in danger in the Fiji Islands ... which, Thou knowest, are situated in the Pacific Ocean." And he is not far removed in our minds from the New England pastor, who preached on the well-known text of St. Paul, and having read: "All things are possible to me," took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket, and placing it on the edge of the pulpit, said: "No, Paul, that is going too far. I bet you five dollars that you can't----" But continuing the reading of the text: "Through Christ who strengtheneth me," exclaimed, "Ah, that's a very different matter!" and put back the five-dollar bill in his pocket.

[THE MISSIONARY AND THE FIJIS.]

This kind of amalgamation of the sacred and profane is constantly confronting one in American soil, and has a firm foothold in American humor.

Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, proprietor of the New York Mail and Express, every morning sends to the editor a fresh text from the Bible for publication at the top of the editorials. One day that text was received, but somehow got lost, and by noon was still unfound. I was told that "you should have heard the compositors' room ring with: 'Where can that d----d text be?'" Finally the text was wired and duly inserted. These men, however, did not intend any religious disrespect. Such a thing was probably as far from their minds as it was from the minds of the Puritan preachers of old. There are men who swear, as others pray, without meaning anything. One is a bad habit, the other a good one.

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All that naïve philosophy, with which America abounds, must, I fancy, be the outcome of hardship endured by the pioneers of former days, and by the Westerner of our own times.

The element of exaggeration, which is so characteristic of American humor, may be explained by the rapid success of the Americans and the immensity of the continent which they inhabit. Everything is on a grand scale, or suggests hugeness. Then negro humor is mainly exaggeration, and has no doubt added its quota to the compound which, as I said just now, completely staggers certain foreigners.

Governor Hoard was telling me to-day that a German was inclined to be offended with him for saying that the Germans, as a rule, were unable to see through an American joke, and he invited Governor Hoard to try the effect of one upon him. The governor, thereupon told him the story of the tree, "out West," which was so high that it took two men to see to the top. One of them saw as far as he could, then the second started from the place where the first stopped seeing, and went on. The recital did not raise the ghost of a smile, and Governor Hoard then said to the German: "Well, you see, the joke is lost upon you; you can't see American humor."

["THAT'S A TAMNT LIE!"]

"Oh, but," said the German, "that is not humor, that's a tamnt lie!"

And he is still convinced that he can see through an American joke.

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Grand Rapids, April 24.

Have had to-day a lovely, sublime example of that preposterousness which so often characterizes American humor.

Arrived here this morning from Chicago. At noon, the Grand Rapidite who was "bossing the show" called upon me at the Morton House, and kindly inquired whether there was anything he could do for me. Before leaving, he said: "While I am here, I may as well give you the check for to-night's lecture."

"Just as you please," I said; "but don't you call that risky?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I may die before the evening."

"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted. "I'll exhibit your corpse; I guess there will be just as much money in it!"

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Grand Rapids is noted for its furniture manufactories. A draughtsman, who is employed to design artistic things for the largest of these manufactories, kindly showed me over the premises of his employers. I was not very surprised to hear that when the various retail houses come to make their yearly selections, they will not look at any models of the previous season, so great is the rage for novelties in every branch of industry in this novelty-loving America.

[MY EXHIBITOR.]

No sinecure, that draughtsman's position, I can tell you.

Over in Europe, furniture is reckoned by periods. Here it is an affair of seasons.

Very funny to have to order a new sideboard or wardrobe, "to be sent home without delay" for fear of its being out of date.